Submission + - ICE Is Paying Palantir $30 Million to Build 'ImmigrationOS' Surveillance System (wired.com)
ArchieBunker writes: Immigration and Customs Enforcement is paying software company Palantir $30 million to provide the agency with “near real-time visibility” on people self-deporting from the United States, according to a contract justification published in a federal register on Thursday. The tool would also help ICE choose who to deport, giving special priority to “visa overstays,” the document shows.
Palantir has been an ICE contractor since 2011, but the document published Thursday indicates that Palantir wants to provide brand-new capabilities to ICE. The agency currently does not have any publicly known tools for tracking self-deportation in near real-time. The agency does have a tool for tracking self-reported deportations, but Thursday’s document, which was first reported by Business Insider, does not say to what degree this new tool may rely on self-reported data. ICE also has “insufficient technology” to detect people overstaying their visas, according to the Department of Homeland Security. This is particularly due to challenges in collecting "biographic and biometric" data from departing travelers, especially if they leave over land, according to Customs and Border Protection.
The agency says in the document that these new capabilities will be under a wholly new platform called the Immigration Lifecycle Operating System, or ImmigrationOS. Palantir is expected to provide a prototype of ImmigrationOS by September 25, 2025, and the contract is scheduled to last at least through September 2027. ICE’s update to the contract comes as the Trump administration is demanding that thousands of immigrants “self-deport,” or leave the US voluntarily.
ICE and Palantir did not respond for comment.
According to the document, ImmigrationOS is intended to have three core functions. Its “Targeting and Enforcement Prioritization” capability would streamline the “selection and apprehension operations of illegal aliens.” People prioritized for removal, ICE says, should be “violent criminals,” gang members, and “visa overstays.”
Its “Self-Deportation Tracking” function would have “near real-time visibility into instances of self-deporation,” the document says. The document does not say what data Palantir would use for such a system, but ICE says it aims to “accurately report metrics of alien departures from the United States.” The agency stipulates that this tool should also integrate with “enforcement prioritization systems to inform policy” but does not elaborate on these systems or policies.
Meanwhile, the “Immigration Lifecycle Process” function would streamline the “identification” of aliens and their “removal” from the United States, with the goal of making "deportation logistics” more efficient.
In a “rationale” section, ICE claims that it has an “urgent and compelling” need for ImmigrationOS’s capabilities. Without them, ICE claims, it would be “severely” limited in its ability to target the gangs MS-13 and Tren de Aragua, and abide by President Donald Trump’s executive order to expedite deportations.
Palantir, ICE claims, is “the only source that can provide the required capabilities and prototype of ImmogrationOS [sic] without causing unacceptable delays.” ICE says the company has developed “deep institutional knowledge of the agency’s operations over more than a decade of support.”
“No other vendor could meet these timeframes of having the infrastructure in place to meet this urgent requirement and deliver a prototype in less than six months,” ICE says in the document.
ICE’s document does not specify the data sources Palantir would pull from to power ImmigrationOS. However, it says that Palantir could “configure” the case management system that it has provided to ICE since 2014.
Palantir has done work at various other government agencies as early as 2007. Aside from ICE, it has worked with the US Army, Air Force, Navy, Internal Revenue Service, and Federal Bureau of Investigation. As reported by WIRED, Palantir is currently helping Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) build a brand-new “mega API” at the IRS that could search for records across all the different databases that the agency maintains.
Last week, 404 Media reported that a recent version of Palantir’s case-management system for ICE allows agents to search for people based on “hundreds of different, highly specific categories,” including how a person entered the country, their current legal status, and their country of origin. It also includes a person’s hair and eye color, whether they have scars or tattoos, and their license-plate reader data, which would provide detailed location data about where that person travels by car.
These functionalities have been mentioned in a government privacy assessment published in 2016, and it’s not clear what new information may have been integrated into the case management system over the past four years.
This week’s $30 million award is an addition to an existing Palantir contract penned in 2022, originally worth about $17 million, for work on ICE’s case management system. The agency has increased the value of the contract five times prior to this month; the largest was a $19 million increase in September 2023.
The contract’s ImmigrationOS update was first documented on April 11 in a government-run database tracking federal spending. The entry had a 248-character description of the change. The five-page document ICE published Thursday, meanwhile, has a more detailed description of Palantir’s expected services for the agency.
The contract update comes as the Trump administration deputizes ICE and other government agencies to drastically escalate the tactics and scale of deportations from the US. In recent weeks, immigration authorities have arrested and detained people with student visas and green cards, and deported at least 238 people to a brutal megaprison in El Salvador, some of whom have not been able to speak with a lawyer or have due process.
As part of its efforts to push people to self-deport, DHS in late March revoked the temporary parole of more than half a million people and demanded that they self-deport in about a month, despite having been granted authorization to live in the US after fleeing dangerous or unstable situations in Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela under the so-called “CHNV parole programs.”
Last week, the Social Security Administration listed more than 6,000 of these people as dead, a tactic meant to end their financial lives. DHS, meanwhile, sent emails to an unknown number of people declaring that their parole had been revoked and demanding that they self-deport. Several US citizens, including immigration attorneys, received the email.
On Monday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s move to revoke people’s authorization to live in the US under the CHNV programs. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt called the judge’s ruling “rogue.”
Palantir has been an ICE contractor since 2011, but the document published Thursday indicates that Palantir wants to provide brand-new capabilities to ICE. The agency currently does not have any publicly known tools for tracking self-deportation in near real-time. The agency does have a tool for tracking self-reported deportations, but Thursday’s document, which was first reported by Business Insider, does not say to what degree this new tool may rely on self-reported data. ICE also has “insufficient technology” to detect people overstaying their visas, according to the Department of Homeland Security. This is particularly due to challenges in collecting "biographic and biometric" data from departing travelers, especially if they leave over land, according to Customs and Border Protection.
The agency says in the document that these new capabilities will be under a wholly new platform called the Immigration Lifecycle Operating System, or ImmigrationOS. Palantir is expected to provide a prototype of ImmigrationOS by September 25, 2025, and the contract is scheduled to last at least through September 2027. ICE’s update to the contract comes as the Trump administration is demanding that thousands of immigrants “self-deport,” or leave the US voluntarily.
ICE and Palantir did not respond for comment.
According to the document, ImmigrationOS is intended to have three core functions. Its “Targeting and Enforcement Prioritization” capability would streamline the “selection and apprehension operations of illegal aliens.” People prioritized for removal, ICE says, should be “violent criminals,” gang members, and “visa overstays.”
Its “Self-Deportation Tracking” function would have “near real-time visibility into instances of self-deporation,” the document says. The document does not say what data Palantir would use for such a system, but ICE says it aims to “accurately report metrics of alien departures from the United States.” The agency stipulates that this tool should also integrate with “enforcement prioritization systems to inform policy” but does not elaborate on these systems or policies.
Meanwhile, the “Immigration Lifecycle Process” function would streamline the “identification” of aliens and their “removal” from the United States, with the goal of making "deportation logistics” more efficient.
In a “rationale” section, ICE claims that it has an “urgent and compelling” need for ImmigrationOS’s capabilities. Without them, ICE claims, it would be “severely” limited in its ability to target the gangs MS-13 and Tren de Aragua, and abide by President Donald Trump’s executive order to expedite deportations.
Palantir, ICE claims, is “the only source that can provide the required capabilities and prototype of ImmogrationOS [sic] without causing unacceptable delays.” ICE says the company has developed “deep institutional knowledge of the agency’s operations over more than a decade of support.”
“No other vendor could meet these timeframes of having the infrastructure in place to meet this urgent requirement and deliver a prototype in less than six months,” ICE says in the document.
ICE’s document does not specify the data sources Palantir would pull from to power ImmigrationOS. However, it says that Palantir could “configure” the case management system that it has provided to ICE since 2014.
Palantir has done work at various other government agencies as early as 2007. Aside from ICE, it has worked with the US Army, Air Force, Navy, Internal Revenue Service, and Federal Bureau of Investigation. As reported by WIRED, Palantir is currently helping Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) build a brand-new “mega API” at the IRS that could search for records across all the different databases that the agency maintains.
Last week, 404 Media reported that a recent version of Palantir’s case-management system for ICE allows agents to search for people based on “hundreds of different, highly specific categories,” including how a person entered the country, their current legal status, and their country of origin. It also includes a person’s hair and eye color, whether they have scars or tattoos, and their license-plate reader data, which would provide detailed location data about where that person travels by car.
These functionalities have been mentioned in a government privacy assessment published in 2016, and it’s not clear what new information may have been integrated into the case management system over the past four years.
This week’s $30 million award is an addition to an existing Palantir contract penned in 2022, originally worth about $17 million, for work on ICE’s case management system. The agency has increased the value of the contract five times prior to this month; the largest was a $19 million increase in September 2023.
The contract’s ImmigrationOS update was first documented on April 11 in a government-run database tracking federal spending. The entry had a 248-character description of the change. The five-page document ICE published Thursday, meanwhile, has a more detailed description of Palantir’s expected services for the agency.
The contract update comes as the Trump administration deputizes ICE and other government agencies to drastically escalate the tactics and scale of deportations from the US. In recent weeks, immigration authorities have arrested and detained people with student visas and green cards, and deported at least 238 people to a brutal megaprison in El Salvador, some of whom have not been able to speak with a lawyer or have due process.
As part of its efforts to push people to self-deport, DHS in late March revoked the temporary parole of more than half a million people and demanded that they self-deport in about a month, despite having been granted authorization to live in the US after fleeing dangerous or unstable situations in Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela under the so-called “CHNV parole programs.”
Last week, the Social Security Administration listed more than 6,000 of these people as dead, a tactic meant to end their financial lives. DHS, meanwhile, sent emails to an unknown number of people declaring that their parole had been revoked and demanding that they self-deport. Several US citizens, including immigration attorneys, received the email.
On Monday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s move to revoke people’s authorization to live in the US under the CHNV programs. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt called the judge’s ruling “rogue.”
