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After federal agents<\/span> shot and killed Minneapolis nurse Alex Pretti on Saturday, Palantir workers pressed for answers from leadership on the company\u2019s work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)\u2014and many questioned whether Palantir should be involved with the agency at all. Leadership defended its work as in part improving \u201cICE\u2019s operational effectiveness.\u201d<\/p>\n Internal Slack messages reviewed by WIRED reveal growing frustration within Palantir over its relationship with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and in particular, ICE\u2019s enforcement and investigations teams. In response, Palantir\u2019s privacy and civil liberties team published an update to the company\u2019s internal wiki detailing its work on federal immigration enforcement, arguing that the \u201ctechnology is making a difference in mitigating risks while enabling targeted outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n In a Saturday thread on Slack discussing Pretti\u2019s killing, Palantir workers questioned both the ethics and the business logic of continuing the company\u2019s work with ICE.<\/p>\n \u201cOur involvement with ice has been internally swept under the rug under Trump2 too much. We need an understanding of our involvement here,\u201d one person wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cCan Palantir put any pressure on ICE at all?\u201d wrote another. \u201cI\u2019ve read stories of folks rounded up who were seeking asylum with no order to leave the country, no criminal record, and consistently check in with authorities. Literally no reason to be rounded up. Surely we aren\u2019t helping do that?\u201d<\/p>\n The discussion was held in a company-wide Slack channel dedicated to general world news coverage. The messages viewed by WIRED received dozens of \u201c+1\u201d emoji responses from other workers seemingly backing requests for more information about Palantir\u2019s relationship with ICE. Palantir did not respond to requests for comment from WIRED.<\/p>\n On Sunday, Courtney Bowman, Palantir\u2019s global director of privacy and civil liberties engineering, responded to the avalanche of employee questions by linking out to the company\u2019s internal wiki describing its DHS and immigration enforcement contracts. The post\u2014last updated, at the time WIRED reviewed it, on January 24 by Akash Jain, whose LinkedIn lists him as chief technology officer and president of Palantir USG, which works with US government agencies\u2014says that in April 2025, Palantir began a six-month pilot supporting ICE in three major areas: \u201cEnforcement Operations Prioritization and Targeting,\u201d \u201cSelf-Deportation Tracking,\u201d and \u201cImmigration Lifecycle Operations focused on logistics planning and execution.\u201d<\/p>\n Those functions align with a $30 million contract ICE awarded Palantir in April for a platform called ImmigrationOS. According to contracting information provided by DHS at the time, the system would give ICE \u201cnear real-time visibility\u201d into people self-deporting and help the agency identify and select who to deport. According to Palantir\u2019s wiki, the pilot for these services was renewed in September for an additional six-month period, and the self-deportation tracking \u201cis being folded into the work on Enforcement Operations Prioritization and Targeting.\u201d<\/p>\n Palantir has also started a new pilot with US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to assist officials \u201cin identifying fraudulent benefit submissions,\u201d the wiki says. The Trump administration has used allegations of fraud to justify increased ICE presence in cities like Minneapolis.<\/p>\n \u201cThere have been increasing, and increasingly visible, field operations focused on interior immigration enforcement that continue to attract attention to Palantir\u2019s involvement with ICE,\u201d the wiki says. \u201cWe believe that our work could have a real and positive impact on ICE enforcement operations by providing officers and agents with the data to make more precise, informed decisions. We are committed to giving our partners the best software for the job, while acknowledging the reputational risk we face when supporting immigration enforcement operations.\u201d<\/p>\n The wiki acknowledges \u201cincreasing reporting around U.S. Citizens being swept up in enforcement action and held, as well as reports of racial profiling allegedly applied as pretense for the detention of some U.S. Citizens,\u201d but argues that Palantir\u2019s customers at ICE \u201cremain committed to avoiding the unlawful\/unnecessary targeting, apprehension, and detention of U.S. Citizens wherever and however possible.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n