Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials now effectively have access to information on 20 million people through systems powered by Palantir Technologies, allowing agents to identify targets and conduct enforcement operations more quickly, according to comments made by senior ICE officials and reported by 404 Media.
At the Border Security Expo in Phoenix, Matthew Elliston, assistant director of Law Enforcement Systems & Analysis at ICE, said agents can access lists of potential targets directly from their iPhones. According to attendees cited by the news outlet, the system can identify an individual, associated addresses and nearby potential targets, allowing agents to expand arrests during operations.
Elliston also said Palantir's technology increased ICE's success rate in locating targets from roughly 27 percent to nearly 80%, as per 404 Media. Investigative work that previously took hours can now be completed in 10 to 15 minutes, he said. The system reportedly integrates between 30 and 40 datasets into a single searchable platform.
Palantir has worked with the Department of Homeland Security for years, primarily through investigative case management systems used by Homeland Security Investigations. Under the Trump administration, however, the company's role inside immigration enforcement has expanded significantly.
Earlier this year, 404 Media reported that Palantir was developing a platform for ICE called ELITE, or Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement. According to documents obtained by the outlet, the system maps potential deportation targets, generates personal dossiers and assigns "confidence scores" to addresses using information pulled from multiple sources, including government records and commercial databases.
The company has also secured contracts tied to ImmigrationOS, a platform designed to consolidate enforcement activities such as raid approvals, detainee processing and legal document generation into a single interface.
Palantir CEO Alex Karp defended the company's role in immigration enforcement during a December interview, rejecting claims the firm was enabling domestic surveillance. "Are we building a database that can be used for surveillance? No," Karp said, while adding that he supported surveillance of U.S. adversaries.
Back in March, Iranian state-linked media identified infrastructure belonging to several major American tech firms, including Palantir, as potential targets because of their alleged links to military, intelligence and surveillance operations. The developments have intensified debate over the role private technology companies increasingly play in national security and enforcement activities both inside and outside the United States.
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