Does Palantir Work With ICE?

Not affiliated with Palantir Technologies Inc. This is one of the more contested topics in Palantir's public record — we've laid out what's documented on each side rather than rendering a verdict. Sources are cited throughout.

Yes. Palantir has worked with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement since 2011, and that relationship has expanded significantly since 2025. What that work involves, and whether it's a problem, is the subject of active, unresolved public debate — including ongoing litigation. Here's what's documented on each side.

What the contracts are

• Investigative Case Management (ICM): a system Palantir built for ICE, described in contract documents as based on a proprietary Palantir solution configured specifically for ICE's operational needs. It has been the subject of litigation, including a 2017 FOIA lawsuit from the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
• FALCON: an earlier Palantir tool provided to ICE's Homeland Security Investigations division.
• ImmigrationOS: a $30 million contract awarded in April 2025 to build the "Immigration Lifecycle Operating System," intended, per ICE's own contract documents, to streamline how targets are selected and apprehended, including "near real-time visibility into instances of self-deportation." A prototype was due by September 2025, with the contract running through 2027.
• ELITE: reported by 404 Media to draw on Medicaid data as part of identifying people for arrest, according to documents released via a lawsuit brought by 404 Media and the Freedom of the Press Foundation against DHS.

The case made against this work

• Amnesty International, in a 2020 briefing timed to Palantir's NYSE listing, concluded that Palantir faced a high risk of contributing to serious human rights violations against migrants and asylum-seekers, and said ICE had used Palantir's technology in arresting parents of children who crossed the border unaccompanied, and in large-scale workplace raids — citing a 2019 raid in Mississippi that swept up nearly 700 workers.
• The American Civil Liberties Union has published a running account of Palantir's ICE-related contracts, describing ImmigrationOS as built to serve the current administration's deportation priorities.
• Just Futures Law, a legal advocacy group, filed a FOIA lawsuit seeking records on ICE's use of the ELITE app, ImmigrationOS, and ICM.
• A frequently cited point of concern: reporting has noted that Stephen Miller, a senior architect of the administration's immigration policy, holds a financial stake in Palantir — raised by critics as a potential conflict of interest.
• Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham publicly criticized the company in April 2025, describing it as building "the infrastructure of the police state" and urging engineers to work elsewhere.

The case Palantir and its defenders make

• Palantir's global head of commercial, Ted Mabrey, responded directly to the Y Combinator criticism, tracing the company's DHS relationship back to Operation Fallen Hero — the federal response to the 2011 killing of ICE agent Jaime Zapata by a Mexican drug cartel — and argued the software has had life-saving applications in that context.
• In a formal blog response to a 2026 EFF report, Palantir said it takes a rigorous approach to respecting human rights across the development and use of its products, pointed to its own published governance and privacy-safeguard materials, and characterized several of the recurring criticisms as "debunked."
• In responses to congressional inquiries (from Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, among others), Palantir has stressed that it does not itself control the underlying data — the systems are operated by the government agencies that hold that data, not by Palantir directly.
• Palantir has also pointed to its broader stated mission of supporting counterterrorism, disaster relief, and Western security interests as context for why it engages with law-enforcement and homeland-security customers generally.

What's still unresolved

As of this writing, FOIA litigation over ICE's use of Palantir tools (including the Just Futures Law suit) is ongoing, meaning some of the operational specifics — exactly how ELITE, ImmigrationOS, and ICM are used in individual enforcement decisions — are not yet fully public. Congressional Democrats have also formally requested more information from Palantir directly, and as of mid-2026 continued to describe the company's answers as incomplete.