ICE Has Been Dumping Protester Photos Into a Palantir Database
A federal lawsuit alleges that ICE agents used a Palantir-powered database to track and intimidate protesters during immigration enforcement operations in Maine. The plaintiffs claim agents labeled observers as 'threats' and subjected them to surveillance and border harassment.
Why it matters
The case highlights growing concerns over the use of private data-mining software by government agencies to monitor domestic political activity.
Palantir did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A spokesperson for DHS calls the case “meritless” and says that “the underlying lawsuit is based on the lie that there is a database of ‘domestic terrorists’ run by DHS.”
Plaintiffs allege in the filing, which is heavily based on documents produced by the government and depositions of DHS agents, that agents had a practice of intimidating protesters and observers. They did this, the filing says, by doing drive-bys of the observers’ homes and, in the case of at least one observer, requiring that she be referred to secondary inspection any time she tries to cross the border until at least January 2027.
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