Spotify Is No Longer Running Recruitment Ads for ICE

Amid widespread criticism and campaigning last year, Spotify is no longer running recruitment ads for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The ads began appearing for free users of the streaming service around mid-October 2025, according to reports on social media.

A Spotify spokesperson confirmed the move to Variety, saying the audio ads were part of a broader “US government recruitment campaign that ran across all major media and platforms.” The spokesperson did not specify the reasons behind the change. In a later statement to music outlet Pitchfork, Spotify said the ads stopped running at the end of 2025, before the deadly shooting of a Minnesota woman by an ICE agent earlier this month.

In October, the nonprofit Indivisible launched a campaign called Don’t Stream Fascism: Cancel Spotify, urging users “to cancel their subscriptions and artists to take a stand by speaking out against their work being weaponized for hate.” Several artists removed their music from the platform in protest of the ICE ads, including indie rock bands Deerhoof and My Bloody Valentine, as well as UK hip-hop group Massive Attack.

But Spotify’s ICE ads may have represented only a small portion of the agency’s broader recruitment push on streaming platforms. ICE recruitment ads began appearing on Hulu, Max, YouTube, and Pandora as early as April 2025, according to a Rolling Stone report published in November 2025.

Spotify reportedly received just $74,000 from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to run the ICE advertisements, according to industry sources cited by the outlet, less than three percent of what the government spent on Google and Meta. Meanwhile, DHS reportedly spent nearly $3 million in 2025 on Spanish-language advertising promoting self-deportation on YouTube and Google.

Despite Spotify’s move, it may be difficult to avoid ICE advertising entirely in 2026. An ICE spokesperson recently told The Washington Post that the agency expects to spend $100 million in the next calendar year on recruitment ads, targeting college campuses, gun shows, podcasts, and sporting events.

This isn’t the first time that tech giants have caught serious heat from consumers over their ICE associations. In 2019, over 150 artists vowed to boycott Amazon-sponsored music events, due to Amazon Web Services contracts with ICE.

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