ICE Agents Have a
20-Million-Person List
on Their iPhones.
Palantir Built It.
On May 12, 2026, 404 Media reported that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents now carry a database covering roughly 20 million people on their agency-issued iPhones — a mobile-deployed dossier system built and serviced by Palantir Technologies under the ImmigrationOS contract.
The disclosure came from a senior ICE official at the Border Security Expo in Phoenix, who described the field-level workflow in operational detail. The 20-million figure pairs with a previously reported Palantir-built application called ELITE— Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement — which queries Department of Health and Human Services records (including Medicaid) and 30-plus federal datasets to populate a map of potential targets with a “confidence score” on each person’s current address.
The dollar trail is on the public record. ICE awarded Palantir a sole-source $30 million ImmigrationOS contract on April 17, 2025, with a September 25, 2025 prototype delivery target. A follow-on $29.9 million operations-and-maintenance task was awarded the same day the prototype shipped. The ImmigrationOS line of effort sits atop Palantir’s 2022 Investigative Case Management (ICM) platform — itself a ~$95.9 million baseline — and is governed by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s June 2025 $100,000 personal-signoff directive.
- 20 millionpeople in the iPhone datasetDisclosed by a senior ICE official at the Border Security Expo in Phoenix — 404 Media, May 12, 2026.
- $30MPalantir ImmigrationOS awardSole-source contract awarded April 17, 2025; prototype delivery Sept 25, 2025; three functions — prioritized-removal targeting, self-deportation tracking, removal logistics.
- $29.9MImmigrationOS O&M renewalSept 25, 2025 — operations and maintenance / adaptive support task on the ICM platform, sole-source justification.
- 27% → 80%ICE target-location success rateReported field-level improvement attributed to the ELITE app at the Phoenix expo; investigation time cut from hours to 10–15 minutes.
- April 2026congressional letterRep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-NY) — 11 information requests, April 24 response deadline.
ICM (2022):Palantir’s Investigative Case Management platform — the underlying ~$95.9 million data-fusion environment that ties ICE Homeland Security Investigations records to federal, state, and commercial datasets.
ImmigrationOS (April 17, 2025):A $30 million sole-source award layering an Immigration Lifecycle Operating System on top of ICM. Three documented functions: streamline identification and apprehension of individuals prioritized for removal (per the contract justification: “violent criminals,” gang members, and visa overstays); track self-deportations with “near real-time visibility”; and improve removal logistics. Prototype targeted for September 25, 2025; an additional $29.9 million renewal task hit the same award number on that delivery date.
ELITE (operational):Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement. Per 404 Media and EFF reporting, ELITE pulls addresses from the Department of Health and Human Services (which includes Medicaid records) alongside roughly 30–40 federal datasets, then surfaces a map view with a per-target dossier — name, photo, biometrics, family connections, employment history — and a “confidence score” on the current address.
The iPhone layer:The 20-million-record set the senior ICE official described is, per the same reporting, queryable from the agency-issued iPhone — meaning the data-fusion environment built on the federal back end is now mobile at the agent level.
“A list of 20 million people readily accessible on their iPhones, increasing the speed at which ICE can find houses to raid and people to arrest.”
404 Media · May 12, 2026 · paraphrasing senior ICE official, Border Security Expo, Phoenix
The federal record is consistent. Palantir Technologies has been an ICE contractor since at least 2011. In 2022 it received the ICM baseline. In April 2025, ICE finalized the $30 million sole-source ImmigrationOS task — explicitly justified as a Palantir-only capability for the existing investigative case management software. On September 25, 2025, the same contract line absorbed a $29.9 million operations-and-maintenance renewal. The USASpending.gov contract record (award identifier 70CTD022FR0000170, federal supply schedule line GS35F0086U) is public. ICE’s deal-flow with Palantir sits inside a broader DHS framework Secretary Kristi Noem instituted in June 2025 requiring her personal sign-off on any obligation above $100,000 — a directive that has produced a notable cluster of contracts priced at $99,999.99.
Alex Karp— Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Palantir Technologies. Publicly defended the ICE relationship at the New York Times DealBook Summit in December 2025, telling the audience “this president has performed” on immigration. (Fortune, Dec 9, 2025.)
Akash Jain— Palantir President of U.S. Government and a longtime architect of the company’s federal practice; cited in 404 Media reporting as the executive whose internal Slack messages described teams that “prototyped a new set of data integrations and workflows with ICE.”
Kristi Noem— U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security; her June 2025 spending directive frames the procurement context for every DHS Palantir award since.
Todd Lyons— Acting Director, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (March 2025 – May 31, 2026). The ImmigrationOS award and the operational rollout described at the Phoenix expo occurred under his leadership; Lyons announced his resignation on April 16, 2026, effective end of May.
Matthew Elliston— ICE Assistant Director identified by secondary outlets as the official describing the ELITE workflow and the 27%-to-80% success-rate improvement at the Phoenix expo.
Joseph Edlow— Director, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. In a parallel December 2025 Palantir award to USCIS, Edlow framed the agency’s posture as “declaring an all-out war on immigration fraud.”
In April 2026, Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-NY) sent a joint letter to DHS and ICE demanding 11 categories of disclosure: every database and analytics program supporting immigration enforcement; a complete list of DHS-Palantir contracts since January 1, 2020 with values and periods of performance; datasets feeding Palantir systems; facial recognition contracts and data-retention practices; details on the collection of data about protesters and people present at immigration operations; a comprehensive report on the ELITE application including data categories and authorized user counts; and a list of all private contractors providing surveillance or analytics technologies to DHS. The response deadline was April 24, 2026. From the floor of the Senate, Wyden separately stated that “ICE is using Palantir apps to collect biometric data and run protestors through facial recognition systems” — a quote that has been entered into the Congressional Record.
Electronic Frontier Foundation (Jan 15, 2026):Published a report on ELITE, focused on the Medicaid-data pipeline and the danger of consolidating government records into a single AI-driven query interface. EFF has filed amicus briefs challenging ICE’s access to Medicaid and taxpayer data and sued the Departments of State and Homeland Security over mass surveillance of noncitizens.
Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC):Calli Schroeder, quoted in 404 Media’s April 16, 2025 contract report, characterized Palantir’s ICE engagement as “facilitating and enabling abuses and violation of rights—rights like due process which... extend to all in the US, regardless of citizenship status.”
Palantir’s response:The company published a January 2026 corporate blog post titled “Correcting the Record: Response to the EFF January 15, 2026 Report on Palantir,” disputing characterizations of its tooling and reaffirming its government work.
We log these positions for the reader. The contractual and capability facts above are independent of the policy debate over what should be done with them.
A data-fusion platform that previously lived on agency desktops is now in field agents’ pockets. It indexes records on roughly 20 million people, returns dossiers with biometric and family-network detail, and predicts where a target currently lives with a confidence score. The build cost roughly $60 million in publicly recorded ICE awards on top of a $95.9 million case-management baseline. The platform is operating today; the prototype was delivered in September 2025; the renewal task is funded; congressional inquiries are open. Whether that capability is, on balance, an overdue modernization or a constitutional problem is a question the reader can answer. The capability itself is documented.
A roughly 20-million-person dossier database now runs on ICE iPhones. Palantir built it under a $30M ImmigrationOS contract awarded April 17, 2025, with a $29.9M renewal in September. The platform pulls HHS, Medicaid, and 30-plus federal datasets and returns a confidence score on where each target lives. Goldman, Wyden, and Velázquez want 11 categories of disclosure. The capability is live.