Palantir systems give ICE agents access to 20 million-person target list, report says

Palantir has given US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials instant access to a list of 20 million people through systems accessible on agents’ iPhones, according to remarks made by senior officials at a border security conference in Arizona.

According to a report by 404 Media, the comments were delivered during last week’s Border Security Expo, where companies seeking to sell technologies to ICE and other government agencies gathered for two days of presentations, question-and-answer sessions, and product demonstrations.

404 Media said it spoke to four people who attended the conference.

The report noted that officials’ claims should be treated with some skepticism, but said the comments nevertheless reflected ICE’s view that Palantir’s technology allows the agency to identify individuals for detention and locations for raids more quickly.

Data from April showed that 70.8% of people held in ICE detention, or 42,722 individuals, had not been convicted of any crime.

The four conference attendees said they listened to presentations by Matthew Elliston, assistant director of ICE’s Law Enforcement Systems and Analysis division, along with other Department of Homeland Security officials.

At one point, Elliston said ICE agents had 20 million targets available on their iPhones, referring to potential individuals who could be detained.

The system could direct ICE agents to a person and a residence, after which agents could determine whether additional targets lived nearby.

Those individuals could be considered lower-priority targets, but ICE could still use the information to carry out additional detentions.

Elliston also said Palantir’s technology had increased ICE’s success rate in locating target individuals from roughly 27% to just under 80%.

Two of the attendees were Kenny Morris, a campaign strategist at the American Friends Service Committee’s Action Center on Corporate Accountability, and Dov Baum, director of the organization’s Action Center on Corporate Accountability.

Elliston said investigative work that previously took hours could now be completed in 10 to 15 minutes. He also said Palantir had provided the agency with access to between 30 and 40 datasets.

Palantir typically does not create its own datasets. Instead, its tools are widely used to combine disparate datasets and make them searchable as a single system.

In January, 404 Media reported that Palantir had been developing a tool for ICE called ELITE, short for Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement.

The tool populates maps with potential deportation targets, opens dossiers containing personal information on each individual, and provides a “confidence score” for a person’s current address.

According to an ELITE user manual obtained by 404 Media, the addresses are drawn from multiple sources, including the Department of Health and Human Services and Thomson Reuters’ CLEAR product.

Palantir has worked with DHS for years, particularly with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). That work previously focused on the Investigative Case Management (ICM) system used by HSI.

A DHS spokesperson told 404 Media in an email: “US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is committed to fulfilling the nation’s mission to eliminate the backlog of illegal aliens who pose a threat to the safety of our communities. Like other law enforcement agencies, ICE uses various technologies while safeguarding civil liberties and privacy rights.”

Elliston also discussed Mobile Fortify, the facial recognition application used by ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

He said the application had been used 200,000 times and claimed it had a 0% false match rate.

404 Media reported in January that Mobile Fortify had incorrectly identified a woman on two separate occasions.

At one point during the conference, Elliston also said the agency had substantial funding and was open to business proposals.