US to spend $30 million to create immigrant tracking program

Federal officials are developing new software to track migrants for ICE, writes USA TodayIt can be adapted for total surveillance of all US residents.

Photo: Tero Vesalainen | Dreamstime.com

Federal officials are developing a new database system called ImmigrationOS to track and identify millions of people in the United States illegally.

The $30 million no-bid contract has gone to Palantir Technologies, the brainchild of Peter Thiel, a major Republican donor, to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents build a high-tech system to identify people for deportation, including gang suspects and overstayers on tourist visas. According to the contract, a prototype of the system will be unveiled this fall.

On the subject: Immigration officers asked to take part in deportations, although they are supposed to deal with legal migrants

Thiel, Palantir's founder and chairman, is close to vice president J.D. Vance and DOGE chief Elon Musk, with whom he previously founded PayPal.

The ImmigrationOS project reflects the approach that DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency) is bringing to the federal apparatus under the Trump administration. Musk’s deputies are looking for technology-driven solutions to improve the efficiency of government. Palantir already services the ICE system used in Department of Homeland Security investigations, and ImmigrationOS will combine data from multiple public and private databases.

“The ongoing campaigns of violence and terror by transnational organizations in the United States and abroad are extraordinarily violent and pose a threat to the American people,” ICE officials said in justifying the no-bid award of the Palantir contract. “They pose an extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.”

Palantir's existing contract with ICE has already exceeded $88 million, and the new ImmigrationOS project will cost another $30 million. Several of Musk's lieutenants at DOGE previously worked at Palantir.

The system will, among other things, track people who left the U.S. voluntarily to help ICE focus on those who remain.

The system may be repurposed to spy on Americans

Human rights groups warn that systems like ImmigrationOS pose a serious threat to everyone. There are no clear restrictions to ensure that it is used only against illegal immigrants. They say the system could easily be adapted to spy on all Americans.

Trump has already spoken out about his intention to strip US citizenship from those he believes pose a threat.

Cooper Quintin, a senior technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights nonprofit, said Palantir's activities have long raised concerns, particularly because of its ability to combine government databases with information from Facebook and even store rewards card data.

While the federal government collects and stores vast amounts of information about Americans, such databases have historically not been combined to protect privacy. In April, USA Today reported that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had agreed to give ICE access to tax data, including information about people who filed tax returns without a Social Security number.

ICE agents will be able to use ImmigrationOS to determine where a person of interest lives and works, when they are home, who they live with, what kind of vehicle they drive, and what stores and restaurants they frequent.

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Quintin noted that a system designed to track illegal immigrants could easily be adapted to target the president's political opponents.

"They've created a really powerful mechanism for analyzing large amounts of data, comparing it and extracting the information you need. It allows you to collect everything about a person and look for a reason to accuse them," Quintin concluded. "Even if you think you're safe now, that may not last long."

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