Money spent by u.s. on delf fdeportaiton ads
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Executive summary
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security launched a large, multimillion-dollar campaign in 2025 to encourage "self-deportation," with officials budgeting roughly $200 million for the core campaign and a series of related contract and platform expenditures that push total DHS advertising obligations into the hundreds of millions of dollars in 2025 alone [1] [2]. Independent tracking and reporting show a patchwork of line-item spends—from targeted YouTube buys of hundreds of thousands of dollars to platform-wide contracts that, when aggregated, produce figures far above the initial $200 million headline [3] [4] [2].
1. The $200 million headline and what it covers
DHS publicly budgeted roughly $200 million for the multinational and domestic "self-deportation" ad campaign tied to the CBP Home/Project Homecoming initiative, a figure cited across government documents and multiple news outlets as the core advertising appropriation to promote the app and related messaging [1] [5]. Reporting notes the campaign was meant to run broadly—broadcast, digital, radio, and targeted social media—and to include outreach both inside the U.S. and internationally [1] [4].
2. Contract obligations and a much larger advertising footprint
Beyond the $200 million budget, federal contracting data and oversight reporting indicate DHS ad obligations mushroomed: Bloomberg Law reported DHS spent about $380 million on advertising services contracts in fiscal 2025 — a nearly 300% increase from 2024 — with more than 90% of that awarded after the administration change and tied largely to the self-deportation push [2]. Accountable.US and other investigations further show fast-tracked contracts were later amended and at least one set of contracts was reported to reach $440 million through 2027 [6].
3. Platform-by-platform spends: millions here, hundreds of thousands there
Platform transparency and industry tracking supply smaller but revealing line items: WIRED identified about $594,600 allocated to at least 30 YouTube ads, with California alone accounting for a large share of that YouTube spend [3]. Fast Company and other trackers reported roughly $3 million spent on Google and YouTube Spanish-language ads instructing people to self-deport, and several outlets tallied millions more on streaming services like Spotify and Pandora and on TV buys [7] [8] [3]. During the government shutdown window in October 2025, watchdog monitoring found DHS spent more than $5.3 million on self-deportation spots while ICE ran millions for recruitment, and other reporting cited nearly $10 million of combined DHS/ICE ad buys in a three-week span [9] [10].
4. Effectiveness, per-exit math, and disputed totals
The Atlantic and follow-ups used DHS internal figures and public FOIA data to estimate costs per demonstrated CBP Home-assisted exit: combining ad spends, airfare, and cash bonuses produced an estimate near $7,500 per self-deportation, based on roughly 35,000 app-mediated departures over nine months and the $200 million advertising outlay [11] [12]. DHS disputed granular per-exit math and framed Project Homecoming as saving money relative to traditional enforcement, while independent advocates and reporters flagged gaps in transparent performance data and questioned the calculation bases [11] [12].
5. What reporting does not (yet) show and the outstanding questions
Available reporting establishes large headline budgets and many smaller platform expenditures, but precise, reconciled totals are still opaque: public sources provide the $200 million budget, contract tallies showing $380 million (fiscal 2025) and amended obligations up to $440 million through 2027, plus multiple platform line items ranging from hundreds of thousands to several million—yet no single public ledger consolidates every transaction across agencies and contractors for a definitive total [1] [2] [6]. Given conflicting claims, campaign amendments, and differing scopes (international buys vs. domestic buys; DHS vs. ICE recruitment spending), the reporting supports a conclusion that the U.S. government spent and contracted well into the hundreds of millions on self-deportation and related deportation advertising in 2025, but a single precise final tally is not publicly documented in the sources reviewed [2] [6] [7].