Last week Palantir Technologies, the controversial data-mining firm at the center of ICE\u2019s mass-deportation campaign, announced it would leave Denver and move its headquarters to Miami.<\/p>\n
This came days after two members of Congress \u2014 Rep. Jason Crow and Sen. John Hickenlooper \u2014 announced they will donate tens of thousands of dollars to immigrant rights organizations to offset campaign contributions they received from Palantir\u2019s executives<\/a> and employees.<\/p>\n More members of Congress are likely to follow suit and return their donations as the company and its political contributions come under more public scrutiny. These donations, while welcome, raise a deeper and more troubling question: Why is a company that powers mass surveillance and immigrant enforcement so deeply embedded in our political system in the first place?<\/p>\n Even before ICE agents killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, the Department of Homeland Security\u2019s enforcement arm racked up a long history of racism, violence, and anticonstitutional activity. What\u2019s really changed since its founding in 2003 is the speed and the scale of that violence \u2014 in the last four months, ICE agents have shot nine people and killed thre<\/a>e.<\/p>\n Now armed with unchecked power from this administration and a growing suite of surveillance tech tools, ICE has a blank check to terrorize all of us. But what few are talking about is how these two pieces of the puzzle are connected: ICE is a financial conduit between the federal government and the tech industry, namely the data-mining firm Palantir. Silicon Valley executives and Capitol Hill suits are getting rich and doing each other favors while a band of thugs threatens our communities and our democracy.<\/p>\n Tech has been a big part of ICE\u2019s deportation pipeline for a while now. In 2018, through my work at Mijente with the #NoTechForICE campaign, we put out detailed documents to track those connections. But as the DHS\u2019s budget has grown under the Trump administration, so have the lucrative tech and data contracts that extend ICE\u2019s reach.<\/p>\n Palantir\u00a0now\u00a0makes billions from government contracts<\/a>\u00a0for software and services. Last year, the federal government paid\u00a0Palantir\u00a0$30 million to build its new AI-driven surveillance platform, \u201cImmigrationOS,\u201d<\/a> now foundational to ICE\u2019s functioning. When agents charge into neighborhoods and workplaces, they are relying on\u00a0Palantir\u2019s custom software to run their operations and using data brokers to get their information.<\/p>\n When the mood in Silicon Valley was decidedly more liberal, Palantir leadership \u2014 which includes co-founder Peter Thiel and CEO Alex Karp \u2014 mainly stayed under the public radar. But in this new political era where retaliation from the president and abuse of force are seen as \u201chigh testosterone\u201d behavior, they are now saying the quiet part out loud \u2014 very loud.<\/p>\n In a 2025 earnings call, Palantir CEO Alex Karp said that \u201cwhen you have an open border, it means that the average poor American earns less\u201d and that he believes \u201cthis country is right to stop that.\u201d<\/p>\n He went on to say that he was proud of the efforts Palantir is involved in around immigration, and most Palantirians are proud too. He may be right: co-founder Joe Lonsdale has posted on X about his support for the government\u2019s actions in Venezuela, and wrote that Palantir was founded to \u201csave Western Civilization from our adversaries, especially communists and Islamists.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n When some Palantir employees asked questions internally about how their software was supporting ICE\u2019s recent killing of ICU nurse Alex Pretti, the \u201cglobal director of privacy and civil liberties engineering\u201d simply sent out a link to information about existing government contracts.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s more than just talk. Karp and other Palantirians are showing pride in the administration\u2019s work through their wallets. As they pocket billion dollar government tech contracts, they\u2019re giving away million dollar political donations.<\/p>\n And the largest recipient of donations from Palantir employees and the company\u2019s PAC are PAC\u2019s set up to support Trump<\/a>, according to OpenSecrets. All you have to do to is follow the money.<\/p>\n