Spotify Faces Heat After ICE Recruitment Ads Surface — NYC Comptroller Wants Answers

New York City’s chief financial officer wrote to Spotify Thursday to press the company for details about the recruitment ads for Immigration and Customs Enforcement that have been running on the platform in recent weeks.

Comptroller Brad Lander, a recent mayoral candidate and notable supporter of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, wrote to Spotify “about recent developments that may violate Spotify’s advertising policies and impact long-term shareholder value.”

Specifically, Lander wants to know about ICE recruitment ads on Spotify, which he wrote have “sparked widespread backlash and at least one major national organization is urging Spotify users to cancel their subscription,” a reference to Indivisible’s “Don’t Stream Fascism: Cancel Spotify” campaign.

“In too many cities, dangerous illegals walk free as police are forced to stand down,” says one version of the ad, which was recorded by a TikTok user and archived by fact-checking site Snopes. “Join ICE and help us catch the worst of the worst, with bonuses up to $50,000 and generous benefits. Apply now.”

“From a fiduciary perspective,” Lander wrote, he is “concerned about the reputational risks these ads may create for the company, which could hamper long-term growth, and [wants] to better understand how the company assessed these ads against the company’s stated advertising policies.”

Lander wrote that the pension funds “hold significant investments in Spotify.” A spokesperson for his office said that, taken together, the funds have 691,681 shares of Spotify, worth $482,793,542 as of Sept. 30. Spotify’s share price has fallen slightly since then.

A Spotify spokesperson told HuffPost in a statement: “This ad itself is part of a wider campaign from the U.S. government running across multiple platforms, including television, streaming, and online channels. Users can help control their ad experience by liking or disliking an ad or by logging into their account via web browser and updating their ad preferences.”

Lander’s letter asks Spotify how it assessed the ads’ against company policy prohibiting “systemic discrimination and marginalization,” and whether the company has assessed “the impact of this controversy on subscriber retention, artist relationships, or brand perception,” among other inquiries.

“Hopefully what we’ll get is good answers to the questions we’re asking,” Lander told HuffPost in an interview Friday morning. He characterized the letter as an initial engagement between a representative of New York City employee pension funds — as comptroller, Lander is a trustee of each of the five funds — and a company in which those funds have an investment stake.

If Spotify doesn’t have a satisfactory response to his questions, Lander said, the city’s funds could work with other investors to press Spotify for answers or consider a shareholder resolution to do so.

“In some cases [in the past], where we have been unable to get answers we are looking for, or have a satisfactory engagement, we have divested from, or sold the stock of, particular companies or sectors,” he said. “We only do that after a lot of engagement. Our strong preference is to use our position as investors to reach resolution. We do this from a responsible fiduciary perspective, believing that what we’re doing is helping increase the value of the companies we’re invested in … we’re just starting here, this is the first letter we’re writing.”

The comptroller said he is concerned with systemic discrimination in the Trump administration’s “mass deportation” agenda — “and that includes any ads,” he said. “The mass deportation effort involves a broadscale hiring effort to make ICE the largest law enforcement agency in American history.”

Lander noted a trend of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents being arrested by immigration agents. “Essentially every time, [it is] a person of color, without, so far as we can tell, lawful basis for many of the arrests,” he said.

“If you are conducting arrests without lawful basis, and they are consistently of people of one ethnicity, that is a systemic civil rights violation — and I believe these ads are part of it,” he added.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, doesn’t advertise exclusively with Spotify. Recruitment ads to become an immigration agent have also appeared on platforms including X, YouTube, LinkedIn and Meta, and on cable television, The Independent noted. Separately, DHS has spent millions of dollars on advertising pressuring people to “self-deport.”

Lander said Thursday’s letter was specifically regarding Spotify’s “quite strong anti-discrimination policy — and we’re asking for how they assess these ads against that.”

Lander’s letter amounts to a shot across the bow for Spotify. As comptroller, he has a legal “fiduciary” obligation to act in the best financial interests of New York City’s pension funds. As well as trustee, the comptroller serves as an investment advisor and custodian for the five funds — one each for police, firefighters, educators, non-pedagogical educational workers, and other city workers. While he does not have unilateral control over the pension funds, he has influence over the funds’ administration. Lander noted that the five funds’ responsible investing program is staffed by the comptroller’s office and that “we do a letter like this in consultation with our boards.”

Combined, the funds have over $300 billion in assets under management, making them the fourth largest public pension plan in the country, according to the comptroller’s office.

Lander’s office shared the letter, which is addressed to Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, with HuffPost.

Lander himself has been arrested by federal agents twice in recent months at the immigration court in lower Manhattan, where agents have been systematically arresting migrants showing up for scheduled court check-ins — and where Lander frequently observes proceedings.

“We owe it to the families of those detained — and every New Yorker impacted by Donald Trump’s mass deportation machine — to keep showing up and demanding accountability for the violence, cruelty, and lawless abduction of our neighbors,” he said last month after pressing DHS for answers about the return to duty of one particularly violent officer.

Spotify isn’t only facing pressure over the ICE advertisements. Ek’s venture capital firm, Prima Materia, recently led a 600 million euro funding round for Helsing, a European military technology company, which led to an exodus of artists from the platform. Ek is also chairman of Helsing.