Build the surveillance state

Information people surrendered to get health coverage became a map for deportation raids. In June 2025 the government began giving DHS Medicaid records covering roughly 79 million people: names, addresses, birth dates, Social Security numbers and racial information. By January 2026, court testimony revealed ELITE, a Palantir-built ICE app that maps neighborhoods to target. Data collected to provide care had been repurposed to locate people.

The walls around other sensitive records fell in the same year. The IRS agreed to share taxpayer data with ICE and disclosed information on about 47,000 taxpayers before a judge ruled the program unlawful and blocked further address sharing. After a Supreme Court emergency order, DOGE gained access to Social Security records containing medical, financial and family information; later reporting indicated an effort to match that data against state voter rolls. People cannot opt out of taxes, retirement or health systems without giving up basic parts of ordinary life. That is why separating those files was a safeguard.

Private contractors are turning those joined files into permanent infrastructure. ICE paid Palantir $30 million to build ImmigrationOS for target selection, apprehension and self-deportation tracking; a later task order took ICE's total Palantir payments since 2014 to roughly $277 million. DHS then signed a department-wide Palantir agreement worth up to $1 billion, while the Army consolidated Palantir work under a $10 billion ceiling. Palantir had refused to work with ICE's deportation arm in Trump's first term, but later removed that internal limit. ICE also prepared a no-bid facial-recognition deal with Clearview AI, whose contract language describes a database of more than 50 billion images.

When a warrant would slow access, the government can buy the data instead. DHS contracted for Penlink PLX, a system aggregating phone, text and internet activity that reporting said could enable real-time movement tracking. ICE bought billions of credit, address, utility and location records from commercial brokers, routing around sanctuary policies and the normal process for demanding information. In August 2026, ICE sought a contractor to buy voter files from as many as all fifty states, including states that restrict access. A new search no longer requires building a database or announcing a program; it can begin with a purchase order and a new set of targeting rules.

The machine is built. Changing its target is now a policy decision, not a technical project. DHS's own inventory lists 238 AI uses, 86 in law enforcement and 35 considered high-impact because the output can principally determine a legally binding decision. Nothing in this record shows the system aimed at protesters, donors or election workers. It shows that doing so would require only access and targeting criteria. For a patient, taxpayer or voter, the practical cost is losing the ability to know what information the government holds, who can search it and which life-altering decision it may drive.