Who paid for the Super Bowl ICE ad?

On Sunday during the Super Bowl, you may have encountered a particularly saccharine bit of propaganda: a pro-ICE ad describing agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement as “friends” and “neighbors”—local heroes, deporting “violent criminals” from the homeland. (Only 14 percent of those arrested by ICE, according to CBS News, have been charged with violent crimes.)

The commercial wasn’t the work of the Trump administration—or even a political candidate or a well-known advocacy organization. The pro-ICE advertisement was placed by a group called American Sovereignty, which is brand new, seems to be a nonprofit or political entity, and has almost no public presence—save for half-a-dozen tweets over the last couple weeks.

American Sovereignty has a bare-bones website created in January, where you can sign up for a mailing list and read its privacy policy. But, otherwise, basically nothing is known.

I couldn’t find any publicly available corporate registration documents, and I got no response today when I reached out to the email address on the website to ask about the background of the group. It’s been the same for other news outlets: After American Sovereignty put up a pro-ICE billboard in San Francisco in the run-up to the Super Bowl, multiple journalists reached out to the group but didn’t get a response.

It’s an odd situation. Somehow, a group with virtually no public information seems to have been set up in recent weeks to buy millions of dollars worth of ads to promote the work of ICE—at precisely the moment when violence perpetrated by federal immigration agents has sparked a massive backlash and placed funding for the Department of Homeland Security in jeopardy. (DHS also did not respond to a request for comment.)

There are a few clues as to what’s happening.

According to documents filed with the Federal Communications Commission, the official name of the organization that placed the Super Bowl ad is “American Sovereignty PAC.” That paperwork lists Daniel Scarpinato as a contact for American Sovereignty. Scarpinato, who served as chief of staff to former Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R), did not respond to a request for comment.

Scarpinato runs what appears to be a public relations group called Winged Victory: The Agency. The firm bills itself as helping clients with “crafting the right message, rolling out an idea, running a large-scale campaign, or prepping you for that tough interview.” Winged Victory didn’t respond to a request for comment.

So it remains a bit of a mystery. (If you have information, let us know.)

Someone created a group (a nonprofit, a political action committee, or something similar) with basically no public presence except for a bland website and a few tweets. It has launched millions in pro-ICE ads, and, at least so far, no one behind the venture has been willing to talk about it.

Ideally, in a democracy, we’d know who is spending millions trying to change public opinion on the secret police. But, in the American system, that’s just not how it works.