ICE partnership (since 2014)
Palantir has come under criticism due to its partnership developing software for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Palantir responded in 2018 that its software is not used to facilitate deportations. In a statement provided to the New York Times, the firm implied that because its contract was with HSI, a division of ICE focused on investigating criminal activities, it played no role in deportations.
But documents obtained in 2017 by The Intercept show that this is not true. According to these documents, Palantir’s ICM software is considered ‘mission critical’ to ICE. Other groups critical of Palantir include the Brennan Center for Justice, National Immigration Project, the Immigrant Defense Project, the Tech Workers Coalition, and Mijente.
In one internal ICE report Mijente acquired, it was revealed that Palantir’s software was critical in an operation to arrest the parents of children residing illegally.
In 2025, Palantir was reported to be working closely with ICE to enable deportation in the second presidency of Donald Trump.
Project Maven (since 2018)
After employee protests in June 2018, Google chose not to renew its contract with the US Department of Defense to work on Project Maven, a program to develop artificial intelligence that can analyze video feeds from aerial drones; Palantir took over the project in December 2019.
Google employees were concerned that the technology could lead to lethal autonomous weapons that choose targets without human input.