Palantir Technologies

In January 2026, reporting revealed that ICE was using a Palantir-built tool called ELITE that taps Medicaid data to identify and arrest people for deportation. The tool maps potential targets and provides 'confidence scores' for individuals' current addresses. A data-sharing agreement between ICE and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services gave ICE access to personal data of nearly 80 million Medicaid patients. The Electronic Frontier Foundation challenged the use of healthcare data for immigration enforcement, arguing patients never consented to their health-related information being repurposed for deportation.

In August 2025, Palantir signed a contract with the U.S. Army worth up to $10 billion over the next decade to provide software and data capabilities to meet growing warfare demands. This cemented Palantir's position as one of the largest defense technology contractors in the United States, building on its earlier Project Maven AI military targeting contract and extensive history of military intelligence work dating back to Afghanistan.

In May 2025, thirteen former Palantir employees published a letter condemning the company's work with the Trump administration, weeks after ICE awarded Palantir $30 million for ImmigrationOS. The former workers, including software engineers, managers, and a privacy team member, said the company had violated its own code of conduct stating software should 'protect the vulnerable.' They wrote: 'Early Palantirians understood the ethical weight of building these technologies. These principles have now been violated.'

Palantir's Investigative Case Management (ICM) system, also known as ImmigrationOS, is used by ICE for immigration enforcement operations. The contract has been expanded under the Trump administration's mass deportation agenda. Civil rights groups have criticized Palantir for enabling family separations and deportations.

Palantir secured $970.5 million in federal contracts in early 2025, including major deals with defense and intelligence agencies. The company's stock soared as investors anticipated increased government spending on its data analytics platforms under the Trump administration.

Palantir won the Pentagon's Project Maven contract for AI-powered military targeting and intelligence analysis. The contract expanded from an initial $480 million to potentially $1.3 billion. Project Maven uses AI to analyze drone footage and identify targets, raising concerns about autonomous weapons development.

In January 2024, Palantir co-founders Peter Thiel and Alex Karp met with Israeli defense officials and signed an upgraded strategic partnership agreement with the Ministry of Defense. Executive VP Josh Harris stated both parties were "doubling down" on AI-based military systems. The partnership was signed during the Gaza conflict. A UN special rapporteur later found "reasonable grounds" that Palantir was complicit in violations of international law regarding the conflict.

In 2023, Palantir was awarded a seven-year £330M contract with NHS England to build a Federated Data Platform, centralizing patient data from up to 240 NHS trusts and integrated care systems. Critics raised concerns about a surveillance-focused company managing sensitive health data, including mental health records, cancer screening, and STI vaccination data. The Department of Health data showed over 300 different purposes for processing information had been created. A former NHS AI lab director who had pledged to close the COVID datastore later left to join Palantir, raising revolving-door concerns.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp was the first CEO of a major Western tech company to meet President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in June 2022 after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Palantir provided its software platforms to assist Ukraine's military defense operations, including battlefield intelligence and targeting capabilities. The company positioned itself as a key Western technology partner in supporting Ukraine's sovereignty.

In March 2020, Palantir received an emergency NHS contract at a nominal £1 to build the NHS COVID-19 Data Store. The contract was extended in December 2020 to a two-year £23.5M deal reaching beyond COVID to Brexit planning and general business operations. Investigations revealed Palantir had been lobbying NHS leaders since at least July 2019, before the pandemic, raising concerns the emergency was used to secure a strategic foothold in NHS data infrastructure.

In August 2019, approximately 60 Palantir employees signed a petition calling for the company to end its contracts with ICE, citing the company's role in family separations and immigration enforcement. Around 200 workers also confronted CEO Alex Karp in a signed letter about the issue. This followed the Mississippi raids and revelations about Palantir's role in targeting immigrant families.

Palantir's FALCON mobile app was used by ICE agents during the largest single-state immigration raid in US history at Mississippi food processing plants. 680 workers were arrested, with children returning from their first day of school to find parents missing. The raids were described as traumatic for the community.

Whistleblower Christopher Wylie testified to UK Parliament in March 2018 that a Palantir employee helped Cambridge Analytica develop its strategy for harvesting Facebook user data. Wylie stated 'senior Palantir employees would come into the office and work on the data.' Palantir initially denied any relationship, then revised its statement acknowledging an employee 'engaged in an entirely personal capacity' with Cambridge Analytica in 2013-2014. The scandal involved improper access to 87 million Facebook users' data.

Between 2012 and 2018, the New Orleans Police Department covertly used Palantir's predictive policing software, which analyzed criminal records, social media activity, and gang affiliations to identify potential crime risks. The program operated under the guise of a philanthropic partnership through the NOLA For Life initiative, circumventing normal procurement procedures and public oversight. The secret nature of the deployment prevented any democratic accountability or public debate about the use of surveillance technology.

Palantir provided predictive policing software to the Los Angeles Police Department that designated 'chronic offenders' and generated bulletins for targeted enforcement. Analysis showed the system disproportionately targeted minority neighborhoods, with those flagged being 53% Latino and 31% Black. Criminologists found the system amplified existing racial biases in policing data, essentially automating historical injustices rather than providing neutral analysis.

Palantir's software was used by ICE to identify and arrest 443 relatives of unaccompanied migrant children who had come forward as potential sponsors. The software enabled family targeting that critics called a betrayal of families who trusted the government's sponsor program.

In September 2016, the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs filed a lawsuit alleging Palantir discriminated against Asian job applicants. The lawsuit found the company 'routinely eliminated' Asian applicants during the hiring process even when they were as qualified as white applicants. Palantir settled in April 2017 for $1.7 million without admitting wrongdoing.

Palantir signed its first contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to build the Investigative Case Management (ICM) system, a comprehensive database for tracking immigrants. This began Palantir's long relationship with immigration enforcement that would total over $250 million in contracts.