Idia Enadeghe, a junior journalism major from Atlanta, settled into her couch, ready to watch “The Sopranos” on HBO Max — a routine where the opening ads usually nudged her toward a new release or limited-time offer, but she was shocked to discover she was being persuaded for something entirely different: a recruitment for a national deportation mission.
“It said, ‘If you are an American, you should care about this,’” Enadeghe said. “‘You should help get people who they deem villains and disrupt American culture out and attempt to control it.’”
The message was not isolated to Enadeghe. Across music, podcasts and video platforms, users report encountering a surge of recruitment ads from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Although the call-to-action is directed at law enforcement professionals, these messages often appear before younger audiences who most frequently use these platforms.
“It was ridiculous. I never thought they [streaming services] would play ads for ICE and put it on one of the most major streaming platforms,” Enadeghe said.
Federal immigration-enforcement agencies have launched broad, high-budget advertising campaigns across public spaces and major digital platforms. Reporting from PBS NewsHour shows that ICE rolled out a national campaign since Sept. 16 that was tied to a $30 billion initiative to hire 10,000 deportation officers, with ad placements across more than a dozen cities and spending surpassing $6.5 million in recent months.
On streaming platforms, Rolling Stone reported that Meta received $2.8 million from ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for recruitment and self-deportation messaging. Meanwhile, WIRED documented an additional $594,600 spent on 30 YouTube ads, concentrated in states such as California, Texas, Florida, Illinois and New York.
These efforts run alongside a separate $200 million television and digital ad campaign awarded under an emergency provision, according to the Associated Press, which allowed DHS to bypass the usual competitive bidding process.
As these initiatives expand across entertainment platforms, from transit screens to Spotify, HBO Max, YouTube and Meta programs, viewers increasingly encounter them in spaces where ads once felt predictable and easy to ignore.
Ethan Agard, a sophomore business management major from Trinidad and Tobago, noticed the ads while watching YouTube and listening to music with his friends, he said. Typically, his ads focus on soccer highlights and sports gear. He said he was confused by the subject matter and the run time of these new placements.
“Most of the ads pointed towards things I like, so I can skip them immediately. Sometimes they automatically skip,” Agard said. “Me and my friends felt very uncomfortable, and so we just tried to skip past it as quickly as possible.”
For Enadeghe, the moment was equally unexpected. She said she had never seen immigration-enforcement ads on entertainment platforms before.
“It’s crazy to me. It’s insane,” Enadeghe said. “I didn’t know that they had gone through famous media outlets like HBO Max. I’m always on HBO Max.”
For many students, this surprise has prompted a shift in how they think about the entertainment platforms that are woven into their daily routines.
Omokorde Jemmot, a sophomore marketing major from Prince George’s County, Maryland, first saw the ads on YouTube. Shocked by the experience, she said she changed the way she viewed the platform.
“Those kinds of things don’t really align with my own personal beliefs, so it definitely gave me a more negative view of the platform,” Jemmot said.
Her reaction grew into a larger concern about what repeated exposure to these messages might mean for viewers over time.
“It makes us more comfortable with that presence where I don’t feel like that’s something that I ever want to accept and just be comfortable with,” Jemmot said.
Her concerns mirror conversations happening beyond campus, where users on TikTok question where to turn for entertainment that doesn’t feel tied to messaging they don’t support.
Agard said he continues to use free platforms because of accessibility, even as he becomes more aware of the types of messages that appear there.
“YouTube right now is my go-to until I can afford to pay for my own Apple Music subscription or Spotify,” Agard said.
He remembers how early online content shaped him long before these ads appeared. Agard, who moved from Trinidad to the United States within the past five years, said online content played a central role in helping him assimilate into a new environment.
“I remember being younger and watching British YouTubers play soccer 24/7,” he said.
“I started developing some mannerisms. When I talk, and I try to cool down my accent, and it ends up sounding slightly British to some people. So I can say 100 percent that stuff like that has shaped who I am today.”
That awareness makes the current wave of immigration enforcement ads feel more pointed. If ordinary entertainment can shape speech and identity, he said, the messaging woven into those same platforms carries its own weight.
“Actively, the internet does have an effect on the mindsets and the opinions of people,” Agard said.
Agard added that the ads hit him personally as someone originally from the Caribbean.
“My parents have green cards. Seeing those ads feels extremely offensive and I hate it a lot because my parents, my siblings, me; we all decided to move from Trinidad to the U.S. because of the resources that it has and the fact that it can build our careers,” Agard said.
Enadeghe shared a similar concern, not just about the ad’s content, but also about the space it occupies and the way it appears.
“It’s a really big problem because it’s coming from such an informal place,” she said.
She emphasized how easily these platforms blend entertainment with messaging.
“Everyone has their own understanding of what immigration, security, border and what everything stands for when it pertains to these specific topics. When that’s what they see and that’s what these platforms are pushing out, I think it’s the most concerning thing,” Enadeghe said.
Copy edited by D’Nyah Jefferson – Philmore
