ICE to Pay LexisNexis Millions for Data to Feed to Palantir
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is renewing a multi-million dollar contract with LexisNexis to access data for use in Palantir's surveillance and analytical platforms. The system, known as ELITE, integrates public and private records to assist in deportation and criminal analysis operations.
Why it matters
This highlights the growing intersection of private data brokerage and government surveillance, raising significant privacy and civil liberty concerns regarding how law enforcement tracks individuals.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plans to pay LexisNexis millions more dollars for continued access to data it can feed into a Palantir platform, according to newly published procurement records. The data is to help, among other sections, ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), the part of ICE focused on deportation.
The documents provide some more insight into the sort of information ICE intends to use Palantir to process. In January, 404 Media revealed the existence of ELITE, a system Palantir made for ICE that helps the agency find which neighborhoods to target by bringing together data from private suppliers and government agencies.
The news comes as ICE arrested more than 51,000 people in July, many of those at airports .
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