Palantir defends its work with ICE to employees after Alex Pretti’s killing

After the federal agents Minneapolis nurse shot and killed Alex Pretty on saturday, Palantir Workers pressed for answers from leadership regarding the company’s work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)– Many questioned whether Palantir should be involved in the agency at all. The leadership defended its work as aimed in part at improving ICE’s “operational effectiveness.”

Internal Slack messages reviewed by WIRED reveal growing frustration within Palantir over its relationship with… Department of Homeland Security (DHS)and in particular, ICE’s enforcement and investigations teams. In response, Palantir’s privacy and civil liberties team posted an update on the company’s internal wiki detailing its work in federal immigration enforcement, arguing that “technology is making a difference in mitigating risk while enabling targeted outcomes.”

In a Saturday Slack thread discussing Preeti’s killing, Palantir workers questioned both the ethics and business logic of continuing the company’s work with ICE.

“Our involvement in the ice issue internally has been swept under the rug under Trump II too much,” one person wrote. “We need to understand our involvement here.”

“Can Palantir put any pressure on ICE at all?” another wrote. “I’ve read stories of people being arrested who were seeking asylum without an order to leave the country, had no criminal record, and were constantly in contact with the authorities. There’s literally no reason to be arrested. Surely we’re not helping to do that?”

The discussion took place in a company-wide Slack channel dedicated to general global news coverage. Messages seen by WIRED received dozens of “+1” emoji responses from other workers who appeared to support requests for more information about Palantir’s relationship with ICE. Palantir did not respond to requests for comment from WIRED.

On Sunday, Courtney Bowman, Palantir’s global director of privacy and civil liberties engineering, responded to a flood of employee questions by linking to the company’s internal website describing Department of Homeland Security and immigration enforcement contracts. The post — which was last updated, at the time WIRED reviewed it, on January 24 by Akash Jain, who LinkedIn lists as chief technology officer and president of Palantir USG, which works with U.S. government agencies — says that in April 2025, Palantir began a six-month pilot program to support ICE in three key areas: “prioritizing and targeting enforcement operations,” “self-deportation tracking,” and “logistics-focused immigration lifecycle operations.” Planning and implementation.”

Those jobs It aligns with a $30 million contract that ICE awarded to Palantir in April for a platform called ImmigrationOS. According to contracting information provided by DHS at the time, the system would give ICE “near-real-time visibility” into people self-deporting and help the agency identify and select people to be deported. According to the Palantir wiki, the pilot program for these services was renewed in September for an additional six months, and self-deportation tracking is being “incorporated into the work to prioritize and target enforcement operations.”

Palantir has also started a new pilot program with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to help officials “identify fraudulent benefits applications,” the wiki says. Trump administration Fraud allegations have been used To justify increased ICE presence in cities like Minneapolis.

“There have been increased and increasingly visible field operations focused on internal immigration enforcement that continue to draw attention to Palantir’s involvement with ICE,” the wiki says. “We believe our work can have a real, positive impact on Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations by providing officials and agents with the data needed to make more accurate and informed decisions. We are committed to giving our partners the best software for this mission, while recognizing the reputational risks we face when supporting immigration enforcement operations.”

The wiki acknowledges “increasing reports of US citizens being arrested and detained, as well as reports of racial profiling allegedly applied as a pretext for the detention of some US citizens,” but argues that ICE’s Palantir agents “remain committed to avoiding the unlawful/unnecessary targeting, arrest, and detention of US citizens wherever and however possible.”