The Department of Homeland Security US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and Removals Operations (ERO) has awarded and funded a new effort with Palantir to support development of the following system capabilities and outcomes, hereby referred to as ICE’s Immigration Lifecycle Operating System (ImmigrationOS), in support of Presidential Executive Orders including EO 14159 – Protecting the American People Against Invasion and Executive Order 13773 – Enforcing Federal Law With Respect to Transnational Criminal Organizations and Preventing International Trafficking.
- Targeting and Enforcement Prioritization, which includes streamlining selection and apprehension operations of illegal aliens based on ICE enforcement priorities—especially affiliates of known transnational criminal organizations (TCOs), violent criminals, and visa overstays.
- Self-Deportation Tracking, which includes near real-time visibility into instances of self-deportation and integration with enforcement prioritization systems to inform policy, ensure efficient appropriate resource allocation, and accurately report metrics of alien departures from the United States.
- Immigration Lifecycle Process, which includes streamlined end to end immigration lifecycle from identification to removal, with increased efficiency in deportation logistics, minimizing time and resource expenditure.
ICE is requiring Palantir to provide software licenses, configuration services, engineering services, and hosting services in order to obtain a prototype of ImmigrationOS prior to September 25, 2025.
ICE has funded this contract on a current ICM Support contract, thus allowing them to move quickly and avoid competition for this high-profile effort. The initial funding action for the first 5 1/2 months of this additional work is $30M. The new work has a duration of 2 years.
How can they do this? ICE is claiming that an urgent and compelling need exists to deliver the ImmigrationOS capabilities as soon as possible. Lacking these three critical system capabilities (Targeting and Enforcement Prioritization, Self-Deportation Tracking, and Immigration Lifecycle Process) severely limits ICE’s ability to execute the President’s Executive Orders and the ability to effectively target transnational organizations.
These transnational organizations’ ongoing campaigns of violence and terror in the United States and internationally are extraordinarily violent, vicious, and similarly threaten the American people. They present an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States. It is essential that ICE obtain these capabilities as soon as possible to enable ICE in targeting and apprehend cartels and other transnational organizations, such as TdA and MS-13.
ICE is making the case that Palantir is the only source that can provide the required capabilities and protype of ImmogrationOS without causing unacceptable delays. ICE currently employs Palantir’s commercial software as the Investigative Case Management (ICM) System for the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). ICM is based on Palantir’s proprietary solution that has already been configured specifically for ICE’s operational needs and meets all critical requirements required by EO 14159. The existing infrastructure already built under ICM can be further configured to meet ICE’s urgent needs without time consuming development.
The current ICM system is the official system ofrecord for all HSI investigative cases, utilized by special agents, criminal analysts, and support personnel both domestically and internationally. ICM enables users to make connections between subject records across various systems, conduct target telephone and address searches, link to seizures made in other jurisdictions, and connect various cases and organizations through reports of investigations. ICM also supports enforcement actions against immigration violators and interface with other systems, including Lead Tracker, to manage ICE’s intake, triage, analysis, tasking, and enforcement disposition of executable final orders of removal. These connections allow for the centralized management of all interior enforcement priorities of criminal aliens. Palantir’ s proprietary technology provides sophisticated analytical capabilities, including deconfliction of data to ensure each subject has one consolidated record, enhanced search using both structured and unstructured queries, workflow capabilities supporting internal case review and approval, data sharing with Customs and Border Protection for lookout and seizure tracking, and daily data export to the analytical system for further analysis. The integrated analytical system on top ofICM enables ICE to discern relationships that help identify criminal networks, promoting investigation and contributing to dismantling criminal organizations.
Palantir’s systems are already ingesting and processing data from multiple ICE, DHS, and external sources necessary to deliver these capabilities; this allows ICE to leverage the existing infrastructure already in the ICE environment to accelerate the timely delivery for ImmigrationOS. Because the Palantir software is already configured to support the ICE mission and environment and already has an existing approved Authority to Operate (a process alone that can take several months to approve) the Palantir Platform solution is the only available source capable of meeting the immediate needs for the ImmigrationOS capability without significant time and development. Palantir has developed deep institutional knowledge of ICE operations over more than a decade of support, and their systems have been tailored to meet strict DHS security and privacy standards.
Their unique system integrations with ICE Data and ability to link to immigration data, leads, and the tracking of those leads ensures continued operational efficiency and national security.
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