As the federal immigration crackdown has expanded across the United States, the government’s activities have relied on infrastructure from several key tech companies.
The defense tech and IT infrastructure giant Palantir has received particular attention for its work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. However, when it comes to selling tech to federal immigration authorities, Palantir is far from alone: ICE and Customs and Border Protection are paying hundreds of millions of dollars for products and services from companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google.
WIRED examined data and records dated from January 1, 2023, to the present that were posted in the two federal contracting databases—the System for Award Management (SAM) and the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS)—focusing on contracts with the companies or contract descriptions that explicitly name the companies or use relevant shorthand. WIRED also reviewed public documents from ICE and the Department of Homeland Security pertaining to the technology at ICE and CBP’s disposal. Collectively, they reveal that the agencies are willing to spend significant sums of money to ensure that the companies continue to power their operations.
In total, Palantir has earned about $121.9 million in payments and obligations from ICE since 2023. In that same time frame, ICE has paid for products worth at least $94 million from Microsoft, at least $51 million from Amazon, and at least $921,000 from Google. CBP, meanwhile, has paid for products worth at least $81 million from Microsoft, at least $158 million from Amazon, and at least $7 million from Google. These are minimum estimates that exclude payments that do not directly mention these companies or their core offerings in publicly available documents.
Many of the payments are for cloud storage powering operations across the agencies. Some payment descriptions mention particular offices—like ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, which carries out arrests and deportations—or highly specific databases that store information about everything from students to ongoing criminal cases. Usually, ICE and CBP purchase offerings from these companies through third-parties—in Microsoft’s case, it’s typically Dell Federal Systems, while for Amazon and Google, it tends to be more obscure companies like Four Points Technology or Westwind Computer Products.
When a third party is involved, it’s not clear whether a tech giant knows that their products are being sold to ICE or CBP. It is clear, however, that without their products, the computing infrastructure of America's immigration machine would bear little resemblance to its current form.
Palantir
Some of the most powerful tools at ICE and CBP’s disposal—data analysis tools that bring together information typically stored across many different federal databases—can often be traced back to Palantir.
Palantir has developed a variety of data management and analytics software platforms for ICE, federal records reviewed by WIRED show. While Palantir does not appear to have done any work for CBP since 2013, ICE has relied on the company’s products since 2011.
In 2014, Palantir created ICE’s Investigative Case Management (ICM) system, a version of the company’s off-the-shelf product Gotham. In a 2016 DHS privacy impact assessment, the agency says that Palantir’s ICM—which the assessment describes as ICE’s “core law enforcement case management tool”—stores "criminal and civil investigative case files," helps facilitate information-sharing with CBP, and performs "investigative research" on systems "both internal and external to ICE and DHS."
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