“You swore an oath to protect and serve, to safeguard your family and your city,” the narrator intones as images of targeted cities and ICE agents arresting individuals play on the screen. “Yet in sanctuary cities, you’re ordered to step aside while dangerous individuals walk free.”
The campaign, broadcasted in over a dozen cities including Chicago, Seattle, and Atlanta, is part of ICE’s $30 billion plan to hire 10,000 additional deportation officers by year’s end to accelerate deportations. The funding is part of the $76.5 billion requested by Trump’s Republican administration for ICE, marking a substantial increase from its current budget, within the broader multitrillion-dollar tax reductions and spending cuts bill passed in July.
ICE is already offering bonuses of up to $50,000 for new recruits and other benefits such as tuition reimbursement as it seeks to fast-track hiring.
Although parts of the federal government are shut down due to Congress not passing a spending measure last week, the ICE advertisements demonstrate that the emphasis on mass deportations—central to the Trump administration’s mandate—remains well-funded.
Millions spent on the 30-second ads
The ads begin with footage of each city’s skyline accompanied by the narrator’s voice addressing, for instance, “Attention, Miami law enforcement.” The ads are consistent in content, urging officers to “join ICE and help us catch the worst of the worst: drug traffickers, gang members, and predators,” according to a review conducted via the ad-tracking service AdImpact.
The 30-second commercials started airing in mid-September across cities like Albuquerque, New Mexico; Boston; Chicago; Denver; New York; Philadelphia; Sacramento, California; Seattle; and Washington, D.C. More cities were added a week ago, including Atlanta; Dallas; El Paso, Texas; Houston; Miami; Salt Lake City; and San Antonio.
As of Friday, overall expenditure on the ads had surpassed $5.7 million, with the highest expenditure since mid-September being $853,745 in Seattle. Recently, however, Atlanta had the largest amount for the past week at $794,084, according to AdImpact.
It was unclear why ICE targeted those locations and not others. There is no standard definition of what is a sanctuary jurisdiction although it generally refers to cities or states that limit their cooperation with ICE. Some but not all of the cities appear on a Justice Department list of cities that “that impede enforcement of federal immigration laws.”
Asked in an AP email to explain why specific areas were chosen as advertising targets, Department of Homeland Security officials declined to provide an explanation. Instead, they replied with a Sept. 16 press release, near the beginning of the ad campaign, reporting that it had received more than 150,000 applications and had extended 18,000 tentative job offers.
Some cities where the ads have been playing, particularly Boston and Chicago, have been repeatedly criticized by the Trump administration for their policies that limit how much they can work with federal immigration enforcement. ICE has launched immigration crackdowns in both of those cities. Local officials in Chicago have been particularly outspoken against the stepped-up enforcement.
Albuquerque is among the smallest metropolitan areas where the ads are airing, though the city’s mayor, Tim Keller, has been a vocal opponent of the Trump administration’s immigration policy. In July, Keller signed an executive order barring city employees from assisting federal authorities with civil immigration enforcement “unless legally required.”
Local police can’t compete with ICE promises
The AP reached out to police departments in areas where the ads were running. Most departments either did not respond or said they did not comment on actions of outside agencies. A few, including Sacramento and Miami, said they had not noticed any of their officers leaving for positions at ICE or DHS.
Four of the markets where the ads are playing are in Texas, including San Antonio.
Danny Diaz, the president of the city’s Police Officers Association, said he’d seen the ads and was concerned about prospective recruits who might be thinking of joining the city’s police department joining ICE instead.
“We can’t compete with a $50,000 signing bonus,” Diaz said. “I do think that the younger generation will jump on that.”
The government shutdown could dampen ICE’s recruitment hopes, he said.
“They’re furloughing federal employees, and I don’t think individuals want to leave one department to go work for a federal agency when they don’t know if they’re going to receive a check or not,” he said, referring to the lapse in funding that has led to federal law enforcement officers going without pay.
Philadelphia police Capt. John Walker said it’s too early to tell whether the ad campaign has had an impact on the city’s recruiting. Instead, he suggested, the ads appeared more geared toward reassuring viewers that the Trump administration was addressing illegal immigration.
“It’s the psychological feel. You want to know that there are cops out there because it makes you feel good,” said Walker, who’s in charge of Philadelphia police recruiting. “That’s all this is, strengthening the belief that they’re doing something.”
The ad blitz comes as law enforcement departments around the country are struggling to meet staffing demands.
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Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa.
