Palantir, ICE and the Billion Dollar Business of Deportation

There is one question that is rarely asked in the public debate over immigration enforcement: Who profits from it? The answer is not complicated, but it is uncomfortable, because it shows that behind what is marketed as security policy stands an industrial complex with a genuine economic interest in deporting as many people as possible.

Weeks of investigation document what has been quietly built over the past several years. The findings are precise and well supported. From 2024 to 2025, the Department of Homeland Security's contract volume with eleven surveillance technology companies doubled to more than $310 million. In 2026, it climbed further to $513 million. The primary drivers of this growth are two companies: Palantir, the data analytics and surveillance company, and Anduril, a defense contractor that supplies border towers, drones, and AI powered surveillance systems.

Palantir is not a peripheral contractor. It is the backbone of ICE's data surveillance infrastructure. The company was founded with funding from the CIA backed venture capital firm In-Q-Tel, an origin Palantir has never denied and never had to deny because, in Washington, it is viewed as a mark of credibility. For ICE, Palantir developed two software platforms: ImmigrationOS and ELITE. Together they map neighborhoods, track immigrants, and identify potential deportation targets. Since the beginning of Trump's second term, Palantir has received more than $1.8 billion in government funding, including $81 million from ICE in 2025 and $97 million in 2026, followed by a $1 billion purchasing agreement. In 2025, despite generating $1.6 billion in revenue, Palantir paid no federal corporate income tax.

Our investigation identifies ten categories of surveillance technologies available to DHS, ICE, and Customs and Border Protection. Data brokers such as LexisNexis sell information on millions of people to ICE, which uses it to bypass the protections established by so called sanctuary cities, municipalities whose local authorities have instructed agencies not to actively participate in immigration enforcement. Data analytics companies such as Palantir organize and connect this information. They are joined by web scraping and social media surveillance, facial recognition and biometric identification, vehicle and driver data collection, mobile phone location tracking, and drone surveillance. Every one of these categories represents contracts, revenue, and profit margins.

Links to our investigations: https://kaizen-blog.org/en/trumps-netzwerke-auf-truth-social-und-einschuechterung-der-justiz-und-verbreitung-von-fake-news-2025/

https://kaizen-blog.org/en/die-architektur-der-kontrolle-wie-peter-thiels-datenmacht-und-das-politische-netzwerk-rockbridge-die-demokratie-untergraben/

The Mobile Fortify application, used by ICE and CBP agents to photograph detainees and compare them against an AI powered database, has recently drawn attention because of its high error rate and because it has also been used against legal observers monitoring arrests. DHS has acknowledged that Mobile Fortify is only one of more than ten AI powered facial recognition tools operated by the department.

The role of the state in this system is more than troubling. Much suggests that this model of state supported surveillance is becoming established internationally. DHS does not simply purchase surveillance technology once it has been developed. It helps develop it. Through a multibillion dollar research incubator, the department finances partnerships with companies in the earliest stages of development and actively shapes the market from which it later buys. The state is not merely a customer. It is a co developer, a venture capital investor, and a buyer all at once.

Across Europe, governments are also no longer limiting themselves to purchasing surveillance technologies. Through EU research programs, defense funds, and national security funding, they finance their development in the earliest stages, making themselves co developers, innovation sponsors, and eventual buyers of the same systems.

The close relationship between technology oligarchs and government is becoming increasingly visible, with Peter Thiel, Palantir's co founder, and Elon Musk serving as prominent examples. This is not a conspiracy theory. It is a structural description of a system in which private capital interests and the coercive power of the state have become so deeply intertwined that they are increasingly difficult to separate. The venture capital sector, our investigation shows, has positioned itself as the "visionary and guiding force of the war machine" and argues that artificial intelligence is essential to America's national security and economic future.

Read also our article: Investigations show: killing by algorithm - the Pentagon is building the machine that decides who dies

The underlying principle is old. It draws on the idea of surveillance and discipline, according to which modern power no longer operates through the spectacle of violence, but through knowledge of bodies and movements. What ICE operates today is the technological completion of that logic: a system that no longer depends on an individual agent watching a street, but on algorithms that assemble data points from mobile phones, social networks, license plate databases, and biometric systems into deportation targets. The violence no longer arrives visibly from the outside. It emerges from the data stream.

What this means politically can be illustrated with a single example. Sanctuary cities, municipalities whose police departments have been instructed not to participate in immigration enforcement, adopted these protections specifically to preserve trust between immigrant communities and local authorities. People should be able to visit a doctor without fearing deportation. They should be able to report a burglary without risking their own arrest. Data brokers such as LexisNexis allow ICE to bypass exactly these protected spaces. A city's democratic decision not to cooperate is overridden by a federal agency's purchase of commercial data. Democratic decisions made at the local level are rendered ineffective by technology contracts at the federal level.

Public interest and attention surrounding raids, arrests, and deportations have increased dramatically in recent months. That is understandable because they are visible and immediate. But the infrastructure behind them is what makes large scale enforcement possible. Without ImmigrationOS, there is no systematic mapping of neighborhoods. Without LexisNexis data, there is no way to bypass sanctuary city protections. Without Anduril drones, there is no comprehensive border surveillance. The raids are the outcome. The technology companies are the prerequisite.

$513 million in 2026. A $1 billion purchasing agreement for Palantir alone. No federal corporate income tax paid by Palantir despite $1.6 billion in revenue. This is not a market failure. It is a system that functions exactly as intended for those it was built to serve..

To be continued ...