Sinners, Marty Supreme and… an ICE Ad? Kristi Noem’s Glamorous TV Spot Cost More Than Almost All of This Year’s Oscar Nominees

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s taxpayer-funded immigration ad campaign cost more than nearly every film nominated for Best Picture at the 2026 Academy Awards.

The spending blitz that became a flashpoint in congressional hearings just days before President Donald Trump announced his intention to replace Noem.

During hearings last week, Republican and Democratic lawmakers grilled Noem on how the Department of Homeland Security came to spend roughly $220 million on the advertising push last year, which included a widely circulated one-minute spot showing Noem riding a horse near Mount Rushmore while warning migrants about the “consequences” of illegal immigration.

The figure eclipses the production and marketing budgets of most of the year’s biggest Oscar contenders.

Director Paul Thomas Anderson’s political drama One Battle After Another, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Benicio Del Toro, carried a combined budget of about $200 million.

Timothée Chalamet led the high-octane sports drama Marty Supreme, directed by Josh Safdie, which was estimated to have a $70 million production budget with roughly another $70 million spent on marketing.

Ryan Coogler’s supernatural horror epic Sinners, starring Michael B Jordan in a dual role, had a total combined budget of around $140 million.

Several other nominees came in far lower. Director Yorgos Lanthimos’s offbeat comedy Bugonia cost about $80 million, while the historical drama Hamnet, centered on a fictional telling of William Shakespeare’s family tragedy, was made for roughly $30 million. Netflix’s lyrical frontier tale Train Dreams for around $10 million.

In fact, only F1, the Apple-backed racing drama starring Brad Pitt, touted a production budget bigger than Noem’s ad expense, coming in at $250 million with a further marketing spend $100 million.

The numbers contextualize some of the fury directed at Noem by members of the Senate and House  panels.

Noem faltered in her responses, including in an exchange with Senator John Kennedy (R-LA), who pressed her on whether the president had personally approved the advertising effort – she insisted he had – and warned the campaign risked putting Trump “in a terribly awkward spot.”

He also raised questions about the contractors hired for the project, noting that part of the ad budget went to Strategy Group, run by Ben Yoho, the husband of Noem’s former spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin. Safe America Media Group, another firm which reportedly received $143 million of the ad contracts, was also scrutinized after reports it was formed days before earning the lucrative contract.

Shortly after the hearing, Kennedy told Fox News host Will Cain on Friday that President Donald Trump was on the phone to him “mad as a mama wasp” that Noem had blamed him for the ad campaign, and was already talking about who would replace her.

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