Grand Theft America / Receipt power-2025-12-03-057
Palantir erases the limit it set on deportation work
Under its expanding ICE deportation contracts, Palantir—which in Trump's first term refused to work with ICE's deportation arm over human-rights concerns—reverses that limit and builds for Enforcement and Removal Operations. Internally it tells staff it must "expand our aperture … into Enforcement and Removal Operations"; asked about the human-rights risk, it replies it "is not an oversight authority entrusted with scrutinizing or questioning executive branch actors."
What happened
The limit was explicit: in a 2020 letter to Amnesty International, Palantir's director of privacy and civil liberties wrote that the company confined its ICE contracts to Homeland Security Investigations because it shared Amnesty's “concern with the potential serious human rights violations against migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers.” One of Trump's first executive orders in January 2025 ordered HSI to prioritize immigration enforcement over national security—dissolving the distinction the limit rested on. In March 2025 Palantir amended its code of conduct. The “Protect the Vulnerable” pledge survives, but its list of protected characteristics—race, colour, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity, disability, age, ancestry, marital status, citizenship, sexual orientation—was replaced with a generic reference to “any characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws.” A separate section directing employees to overcome conscious and unconscious biases was deleted outright. Thirteen former employees signed a public letter accusing leadership of being “complicit” in “normalizing authoritarianism.”
Why it matters
The state can only deport at scale if someone builds the machinery. A contractor that drew a human-rights line at removal operations, erased it, and then declared itself no oversight authority is the point at which private capacity stops acting as a check on government action.
Receipt details
- Phase 1
- Build a surveillance machine
- Fuse government data into one system
