The Deportation Panopticon

How Palantir Turned Every Database Into an ICE Watchlist

Nov 26, 2025

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Silicon Valley’s surveillance empire built the infrastructure for mass deportations—and made millions while doing it.

When federal agents detained Mahmoud Khalil outside his New York apartment on March 8, 2025, President Trump called it “the first arrest of many to come.” Khalil hadn’t committed a crime. The Columbia University graduate student, a permanent U.S. resident, had spoken at campus protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza. Within weeks, at least nine more foreign students who’d participated in protests lost their visas. Rights groups warn that Palantir’s Immigration OS has the capacity to monitor social media, visa records, protest attendance, and association networks. However, no court filings have confirmed its use in identifying Khalil or other students.

This wasn’t traditional policing. It was algorithmic targeting. And it’s operational nationwide.

In April 2025, ICE gave Palantir a $30 million contract for ImmigrationOS, a platform that doesn’t just help agents find people they’re already looking for. It uses AI to predict who should be targets based on behavioral patterns, social connections, and database interactions. By October, ICE had paid Palantir an additional $51 million for the system that’s fundamentally changed immigration enforcement from reactive case management to predictive policing.

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Every Government Interaction Is Now Surveillance

Here’s what makes ImmigrationOS different from traditional databases: data fusion. When someone renews a driver’s license, the system cross-references that interaction with utility records, tax filings, employment history, school enrollments, and social connections. ICE doesn’t just search individual databases anymore. Palantir’s platform searches them all at once, building comprehensive profiles on millions of people.

The scope is staggering. Documents obtained through FOIA requests by Just Futures Law reveal that ICE’s surveillance platforms now pull in international travel records, student visa data, telecommunications metadata, and GPS-based location information. In May 2025, ICE got unprecedented access to IRS tax records, data that had been explicitly protected from law enforcement since the Privacy Act of 1974. ICE’s social media monitoring programs expanded in 2025, with rights groups warning of round-the-clock surveillance. While ICE’s Law Enforcement Support Center in Vermont and facilities in California are known to support immigration enforcement, no documentation confirms the existence of dedicated 24/7 social media monitoring hubs in those locations.

A dystopian cityscape showing people living in transparent glass cube buildings, their daily lives fully visible, while a massive dark monolithic tower looms above them shrouded in shadow. The glass structures glow with warm amber light against a cold blue atmosphere, illustrating the contrast between vulnerable, exposed citizens and an opaque surveillance state that watches unseen. — Welcome to the glass city—where you’re transparent and the watchers are not.

The targeting goes way beyond immigration violations. After Trump designated “Antifa” as a domestic terrorist organization in September, ICE began using administrative subpoenas to demand data from Meta about accounts publishing information on immigration operations, including pages like StopICE.net. Legal challenges documented by VisaVerge describe it as “administrative powers intended for civil immigration cases being used for criminal investigations involving protesters and watchdogs.” That should alarm anyone who values First Amendment protections.

Despite California’s sanctuary laws explicitly barring local cooperation with ICE, Southern California authorities shared license plate information with immigration enforcement more than 100 times between January and September 2025, CalMatters reported. In San Francisco, officers let out-of-state law enforcement run over 1.6 million searches of the city’s license plate reader database. At least 19 were related to ICE operations.

The Architects of Deportation Are Financially Invested in the Technology

The conflicts of interest aren’t hidden. They’re documented in public financial disclosures.

Stephen Miller, the Trump administration’s chief architect of immigration policy, holds between $100,000 and $250,000 in Palantir stock. That’s according to forms obtained by the Project on Government Oversight in June 2025. Representative James Comer (R-KY), Chair of the House Oversight Committee with authority over DHS contracts, bought $15,000 in Palantir stock on Trump’s inauguration day. The stock has since risen 73%, driven largely by government contracts.

“Every deportation conducted using Palantir’s technology potentially increases Stephen Miller’s personal wealth,” argues Nick Schwellenbach of POGO. “Miller designs the enforcement priorities, signs off on the contracts, and benefits financially from their execution.”

The money flowing to Palantir is extraordinary. The company has pulled in more than $900 million in federal contracts since Trump took office in January 2025, according to The New York Times. During the third quarter of 2025 alone, ICE paid Palantir $51 million for surveillance software. The company also kicked in funds for Trump’s $300 million White House ballroom project and sponsored the military parade in June. CEO Alex Karp personally donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration committee.

Meanwhile, the private prison company Geo Group reported an all-time high occupancy of 26,000 people by September 2025. Geo Group’s detention facilities held immigrants that were flagged by Palantir’s system. “We’ve never seen anything like this before,” CEO George Zoley told investors. “Our existing facilities are on full throttle.” The company is projecting $3 billion in revenue for 2026.

Citizens Aren’t Protected From This Surveillance

The infrastructure built for immigration enforcement doesn’t distinguish between citizens and non-citizens. It tracks database interactions, not legal status.

In June 2025, ICE agents raided three Houston restaurants armed with detailed information that could only have come from tax records: employees’ full names, addresses, Social Security numbers, employment history, and wage data. Twelve workers were detained, including three U.S. citizens held for “verification” despite presenting birth certificates and passports.

The system had flagged the restaurants not because of criminal activity, but because tax data analysis showed the presence of workers who might be undocumented. ImmigrationOS built “association networks” linking all employees and recommended enforcement for the entire workplace.

Similar operations hit Nebraska meatpacking plants, Arizona construction sites, and California agricultural operations throughout summer 2025.

“The algorithm doesn’t check citizenship before recommending enforcement—it identifies patterns and lets agents sort it out later,” explains a National Immigration Law Center attorney working on related litigation.

What It Means

This isn’t a slippery slope toward authoritarianism. It’s operational infrastructure for it. The technical capability for mass surveillance, ideological screening, and political targeting now exists. Only policy changes are needed to redirect it.

Amnesty International documented the targeting of student protesters as evidence that “the use of this technology in this context risks fueling the Trump administration’s capacity to make arbitrary decisions to deport marginalized people on a whim and in massive numbers with limited to no access to due process.” But the implications extend beyond immigration. When license plate readers flag protest attendees, when social media monitoring identifies “anti-enforcement activities,” when tax records become deportation tools—the infrastructure serves whoever controls it.

“Essentially, AI architecture becomes policy,” notes the American Immigration Council in its August 2025 analysis. The system’s design—how it integrates data, flags individuals, and prioritizes actions—inevitably shapes outcomes. And those outcomes currently concentrate enormous power in platforms with minimal public oversight.

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What’s Next

Fourth Amendment litigation challenging algorithmic enforcement is moving through multiple district courts. These cases will determine whether AI-driven “enforcement prioritization analysis” satisfies constitutional requirements for individualized probable cause or represents the kind of general warrant the Fourth Amendment was designed to prevent.

ICE’s September 2025 prototype deployment of ImmigrationOS marks the beginning, not the end, of expansion. Contract documents describe three main functions: identifying removal targets, tracking “self-deportations” with near real-time visibility, and optimizing deportation logistics. The self-deportation tracking component reveals totalizing ambition through monitoring of border crossings and travel patterns to identify when anyone voluntarily leaves the country.

Watch for USCIS implementation of its new enforcement powers. On October 6, 2025, agents who traditionally process benefits applications gained authority to carry firearms, execute warrants, and conduct arrests. This means surveillance now operates even in contexts where people seek legal status.

What You Can Do

Identify local contracts. File public records requests with your city, county, and state agencies asking about contracts or data-sharing agreements with Palantir, ICE, or fusion centers. Just Futures Law provides FOIA templates at justfutureslaw.org.

Attend contract renewal hearings. Most surveillance contracts renew annually. City councils and county boards hold public hearings. Show up and testify. Berkeley successfully canceled Palantir contracts through sustained organizing pressure.

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Build coalitions. Link immigrant rights organizations with privacy advocates, racial justice groups, and civil liberties defenders. The surveillance infrastructure affects everyone.

Document abuses. If you witness ICE operations, workplace raids, or surveillance-related detentions, document details and connect with organizations like the American Immigration Council and National Immigration Law Center .

Support litigation. Organizations like Just Futures Law and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are challenging these surveillance systems in court. Financial support and case referrals strengthen these efforts.

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Methods & Verification: All factual claims were cross-checked against the following: federal contract records (USAspending.gov), financial disclosures (Office of Government Ethics, FEC), leaked internal communications verified by 404 Media, FOIA documents obtained by Just Futures Law, corporate earnings calls, and investigative reporting from The New York Times, NOTUS, Biometric Update, and Amnesty International. Quotes independently confirmed via original sources and organizational reports dated April-November 2025.