The largest political advertisement spender of the year is: you, the U.S. taxpayer.
While the rest of the Trump administration hatchets away at the federal budget, the Department of Homeland Security has gone on a spending spree to heap praise on Donald Trump. The agency has so far spent at least $51 million in 2025 on a sprawling ad campaign warning undocumented immigrants to either exit the country or be “hunted down.”
Fox News bought the bulk of the ad spots, airing $9 million worth of content, Axios reported Wednesday. America’s morning shows saw the most program-specific spending, with Today, CBS Morning, and Good Morning America leading the pack.
Over the course of the last month, viewers of three programs consumed the most DHS advertising: the Mexican soccer league (Fútbol: Liga MX), Fox’s The Five, and Univision’s Despierta America.
But the campaign has also had a digital arm targeting social media users. The ads have specifically targeted Spanish speakers and users who like Mexican pop music, Latin music, the Mexican Grand Prix, Latin cuisine, and the Mexican national soccer team, according to Meta ad library data obtained by Axios.
Almost all the adverts feature DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. Directly facing the camera, Noem suggests that undocumented immigrants are “violent criminals” flooding American cities with drugs, and accuses the Biden administration of taking a weak stance on border crossings. (Joe Biden increased border enforcement across the board and arrested an “unprecedented” number of immigrants that crossed illegally, according to the libertarian think tank Cato Institute.)
One detail is consistent across all the DHS adspots: unmitigated applause for the current president’s agenda.
“Strong borders mean a stronger America. President Trump is making America safe again,” Noem says at the end of one advert.
Compare that to DHS’s last ad campaign under the Biden administration: a series of billboards in Texas that read a person “in immigration custody has rights.” That campaign cost $150,000, and did not feature President Joe Biden or former DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
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