{"id":23138,"date":"2025-09-22T18:41:25","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T18:41:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=23138"},"modified":"2025-09-22T18:41:25","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T18:41:25","slug":"documents-offer-rare-insight-on-ices-close-relationship-with-palantir-ice-us-immigration-and-customs-enforcement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=23138","title":{"rendered":"Documents offer rare insight on Ice\u2019s close relationship with Palantir | Ice (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/span> Composite: Rita Liu\/The Guardian\/Getty Images\/Just Futures Law<\/p>\n

Over the past decade, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (Ice) has amassed millions of data points that it uses to identify and track its targets \u2013 from social media posts to location history and, most recently, tax information.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s been one, multibillion-dollar tech company particularly instrumental in enabling Ice to put all that data to work: Palantir, the data analytics firm co-founded by Peter Thiel, the rightwing mega-donor and tech investor.<\/p>\n

For years, little was known about how Ice uses Palantir\u2019s technology. The company has consistently described itself as a \u201cdata processor\u201d and says it does not play an active role in any of its customers\u2019 data collection efforts or what clients do with that information.<\/p>\n

Now, a cache of internal Ice documents \u2013 including hundreds of pages of emails between Ice and Palantir, as well as training manuals, and reports on the use of Palantir products \u2013 offer some of the first real-world examples of how Ice has used Palantir in its investigations and during on-the-ground enforcement operations.<\/p>\n

The documents, which were obtained by immigrant legal rights group Just Futures Law through a Freedom of Information Act request and reviewed by the Guardian, largely cover Palantir\u2019s contract with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the investigative arm of Ice that is responsible for stopping the \u201cillegal movement of people, goods, money, contraband, weapons and sensitive technology\u201d.<\/p>\n

The documents span the period of 2014 to 2022, illustrating Palantir\u2019s work with both Democratic and Republican administrations. But experts say the insights are especially alarming in light of the second Trump administration\u2019s unprecedented investment in Ice. As the agency chases aggressive deportation quotas, Ice is set to gain even more personal data from federal agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service, as well as from new tools such as facial-recognition software made by Clearview AI.<\/p>\n

Palantir recently won a $30m contract to build the government a new platform called ImmigrationOS that will service Ice branches beyond HSI, and aims to \u201cstreamline\u201d the identification and deportation of immigrants. While the documents are largely limited to HSI\u2019s operations, it\u2019s easy to see how the tools could be of use to other branches of Ice.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve always known what the tools Palantir built are capable of. We now have the receipts for that,\u201d said Jacinta Gonz\u00e1lez, one of the original organizers behind the No Tech for Ice campaign and the head of programs at digital rights non-profit MediaJustice.<\/p>\n

The documents reveal how deeply embedded Palantir\u2019s tools were in HSI\u2019s day-to-day operations, <\/em>helping its agents to investigate and arrest people using a searchable super-network of government and private databases.<\/p>\n

They show the HSI team used Palantir platforms and apps to track air travel, analyze information like driver\u2019s license scans and track people\u2019s locations using cell phone records.<\/p>\n

In an example that highlights the vastness of the data Ice has access to: one March 2020 training document detailed how Palantir software allowed Ice agents to search across data from the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (Sevis), which at the time contained 4.9 million records \u201cof non-immigrant students, exchange visitors and their dependents\u201d dating back to 2016. Another told Ice agents they could enhance their investigations by using phone numbers or names extracted from phones the agents unlocked using technology from Cellebrite, an Israeli forensic software company that has had a contract with Ice since 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cPalantir is the corporate backbone of Ice that the agency is relying on for surveillance and deportations,\u201d said Hannah Lucal, a data and tech fellow at Just Futures Law. \u201cPalantir has been used in Ice\u2019s day-to-day operations for data surveillance around deportations and that\u2019s been true for over a decade.\u201d<\/p>\n

Palantir spokesperson Lisa Gordon said the company has been working with the Department of Homeland Security since 2012 and the company \u201cfocuses on supporting the agency\u2019s investigations and operations \u2013 including but not limited to everything from stopping drug trafficking cartels to disrupting human trafficking networks\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ice did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

A custom-built app for field operations<\/h2>\n

One of the most revealing elements of the documents relates to Falcon, a desktop and mobile app Palantir custom-built for Ice.<\/p>\n

Palantir won the contract to build Falcon in 2014, and designed it to help agents at HSI better communicate with their teammates and analyze data they collect. Ice stopped using Falcon in 2022 in favor of an HSI-built tool called Raven.<\/p>\n

The documents show Ice agents used Falcon to help run on-the-ground operations and report back. The app allowed agents to track their own teammates\u2019 and subjects\u2019 locations, and record and share real-time information from in-person encounters such as field interviews or scans of people\u2019s licenses.<\/p>\n

<\/span>A Palantir training document shows how its app Falcon could be used to track someone\u2019s GPS location. <\/span> Photograph: Courtesy of Just Futures Law<\/p>\n

One document showed that agents could use Falcon to search for people\u2019s names, known locations, vehicles or passport information against Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other federal databases like the Enforcement Integrated Database (EID) \u2013 a vast database that holds biometric and personal information on anyone who has been encountered or arrested, detained or deported by any DHS agency \u2013 on the go.<\/p>\n

For example, in January 2019, Ice\u2019s investigative unit was preparing for an anti-human-trafficking operation at the 53rd Super Bowl in Atlanta, which DHS had designated a high-level security event that could require \u201cextensive federal interagency support\u201d. HSI was expected to deploy \u201cdozens of agents\u201d for enforcement operations throughout the weekend in teams that would rely heavily on Falcon, emails between Ice agents show. The agents\u2019 tasks included \u201cperforming field interviews, analysis, blueforce tracking, command center functions\u201d, one HSI special agent wrote.<\/p>\n

In addition to collecting and analyzing field interviews, the agents used Falcon for \u201cblueforce tracking\u201d, a military term for tracking someone\u2019s GPS location. Training documents show Ice agents could also use Falcon to track a person\u2019s location, including their \u201croute and movement\u201d, hour by hour using cell phone tower records.<\/p>\n

In advance of the Super Bowl operations, Ice officials dispatched a Palantir employee to Atlanta to refresh local agents on how to take advantage of Falcon\u2019s capabilities while in the field. When reporting back from the training, the Palantir representative wrote in an email that \u201cagents seemed pretty excited about the ease and power of Falcon Mobile to support the operation\u201d and particularly the \u201cease of the driver\u2019s license scanning\u201d.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Officers from the Metropolitan police department, FBI and Homeland Security Investigations monitor a high school football game in Washington DC on 12 September.<\/span> Photograph: Pablo Mart\u00ednez Monsiv\u00e1is\/AP<\/p>\n

In another case, Ice touted the use of Falcon to find a target\u2019s location in a February 2018 gang \u201ctakedown\u201d operation in New York. Falcon was used to plan several aspects of the operation, including mapping out the gang\u2019s organizational structure. When one of the targets was not at the initial location, Ice agents used Falcon \u201cto develop information for another address in Manhattan based on a tip the target was with family members\u201d, the document reads.<\/p>\n

Embedding with Ice agents and helping them find new ways to use Palantir products was a big part of certain employees\u2019 jobs, according to Olive Ratliff, a former Palantir employee who worked at the company from 2021 to 2022. Palantir engineers acted as consultants, helping customers figure out how to use apps like Falcon, and were incentivized to find new use cases \u201cthat the client hasn\u2019t thought of yet\u201d that would make Palantir products more integral to the client\u2019s work. \u201cPalantir\u2019s whole business model is about upselling. That\u2019s the only way that they grow,\u201d Ratliff said.<\/p>\n

A vast and powerful dataset<\/h2>\n

The documents also reveal the breadth of information that Palantir enabled Ice to access, allowing them to track people across multiple databases, at times at the request of other government agencies.<\/p>\n

Both the Falcon app and another Palantir-built platform, Investigative Case Management (ICM), enabled Ice to access a network of federally and privately owned databases of people\u2019s information. Ice agents were encouraged to upload as much data as possible from field operations into Falcon and to share it with other Ice officials. \u201cImporting data from sources not ingested into Falcon is a great way to add data that bolsters your investigation,\u201d a Palantir training guide reads.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Falcon was used to plan several aspects of a 2018 gang \u2018takedown\u2019 operation, including mapping out the gang\u2019s organizational structure.\u2019<\/span> Photograph: Courtesy of Just Futures Law<\/p>\n

One guide detailed how to import digital files from phones that agents had confiscated at US borders, or obtained in the course of arrests and had unlocked using Cellebrite technology. The guide indicated agents could search for phone numbers and names extracted from those phones to see whether they came up in databases already accessible via Palantir platforms. If an Ice agent confiscated someone\u2019s phone, saw messages between that person and another number, and wanted to check whether the recipient\u2019s name or number came up in other databases, they could search Sevis, for instance, which at the time included nearly 5 million records on student visa holders and their dependents.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith more than 7,000 agencies worldwide conducting 1.5 million legally authorized investigations annually, we provide targeted evidence extraction and digital investigation capabilities under strict legal oversight,\u201d said Cellebrite spokesperson Victor Cooper.<\/p>\n

Emails also show Ice used Palantir products to track individuals across various databases at the behest of other agencies. In emails from June 2020, an agent in an HSI office in Arkansas asked for technical support tracking whether someone being investigated by another government agency had boarded a flight. The emails show the agents expected to be able to search for this individual across two DHS databases: the Advance Passenger Information System (Apis), which includes \u201cpre-arrival and departure manifest data on all passengers and crew members\u201d, and a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) border crossing database that tracks people, cargo and vehicles crossing through US ports of entry and exit.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe received a request to locate a person from a partner agency who has had extensive international travel,\u201d the email read.<\/p>\n

Ice agents were also encouraged to import information from databases not connected to the Palantir tools, including subscription-based services like the investigative platform Thomson Reuters Clear, which collects information from data brokers like Equifax; news articles and social media posts; CBP border crossing data; and local, state, national and international law enforcement offices including the FBI\u2019s National Crime Information Center.<\/p>\n

Data collected in the ICM platform was, in some cases, made accessible to agents in other parts of Ice, including units within CBP, the Transportation Security Administration and the US Coast Guard, emails from July 2019 show. A unit of immigration officers charged with arrests and removals, known as Enforcement and Removal Operations, or ERO, was also in some cases given access to Palantir platforms. ERO officers who were on HSI taskforces were required to \u201cdocument all investigative activity\u201d related to the taskforce in Palantir\u2019s ICM platform, a policy memo published in 2016 shows.<\/p>\n

Experts fear that the Trump administration will start to use the vast database network powered by Palantir to supercharge its deportation machine \u2013 which has already removed more than 216,000 people in the first nine months. While Palantir did not contract with ERO before, the company will now be working with this unit under the $30m contract.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe actually get to see Palantir providing these directions for very intense data surveillance,\u201d Lucal of Just Futures Law said. \u201cAs the administration is doing this work to consolidate systems of state surveillance even more than it already is, Palantir stands to profit from that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Experts warn that, in light of the Trump administration\u2019s threats to crack down on \u201cfar-left\u201d groups, the scope of application for Palantir\u2019s tools could only grow. Already, a new report from the Intercept revealed HSI subpoenaed and received information from Google about international students who were being investigated over their pro-Palestinian activism.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow [with access to more federal databases] Ice can use this type of surveillance apparatus on anyone \u2013 not only anyone who is undocumented but anyone who this administration wants to criminalize and anyone who the administration wants to put under surveillance,\u201d said Gonz\u00e1lez of MediaJustice.<\/p>\n

\u201cTime and time again, you\u2019re seeing Ice act in ways that are incredibly violent and aggressive. It does have a chilling effect. When you know they have a technology that can track relationships, your conversations, and your organizing activity, that can be a silencing force.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Composite: Rita Liu\/The Guardian\/Getty Images\/Just Futures Law Over the past decade, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (Ice) has amassed millions of data points that it uses to identify and track its targets \u2013 from social media posts to location history and, most recently, tax information. And there\u2019s been one, multibillion-dollar tech company particularly<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23139,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[1083,13303,5259,5081,2466,12921,2081,8328,1990,14139,485,1457],"class_list":{"0":"post-23138","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-close","9":"tag-customs","10":"tag-documents","11":"tag-enforcement","12":"tag-ice","13":"tag-ices","14":"tag-immigration","15":"tag-insight","16":"tag-offer","17":"tag-palantir","18":"tag-rare","19":"tag-relationship"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}