Newly declassified court documents have revealed that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) used Palantir Technologies to store personal information on citizens and civil rights observers, and used confidential medical records to guide immigration operations, raising alarms over mass surveillance and potential constitutional violations.
The revelations stem from a lawsuit filed by four observers who reported being surveilled, harassed and intimidated during immigration raids in Maine in January. Case records document how an ICE agent entered the personal data of six individuals into an Investigative Case Management system. The records also describe the surreptitious collection of photographs, vehicle license plates and the use of facial recognition tools without consent or transparent legal justification.
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Two protesters were formally classified as threats to law enforcement while they were peacefully present in a Home Depot parking lot. In one specific case, plaintiff Polyxenia Pantos had her vehicle and driving history investigated by a federal agent after she photographed an arrest in Portland, evidencing a pattern of institutional harassment against citizen oversight and independent journalism.
The surveillance of U.S. citizens is linked to the deployment of the ELITE application, developed by Palantir and adopted by ICE in late September. The tool consolidates multiple information sources, creates profiles, identifies targets, generates location routes and assigns confidence scores to data. Its implementation coincided with an accelerated hiring process that brought in more than 12,000 new agents with significant cuts to training programs, increasing the risk of operational abuses.
One of the most legally questioned aspects is the use of protected healthcare data. An investigation found that ELITE processes records from the Department of Health and Human Services, combining them with public and commercial databases. The tool analyzes medical records—including names, addresses and photographs—to guide agents on where to conduct operations and raids, as recently happened in Oregon with the arrest of thirty people.
“ICE IS PALANTIR” – @RepAOC tells @MPUniversityUS Students vs Billionaires Town Hall pic.twitter.com/O6uGTDyOxL
— PurgePalantir (@PurgePalantir) September 28, 2026
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