kill switch who is palantir, and why are they involved with ICE?
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Mar 11, 2026 Makena Kelly, WIRED senior politics writer who covers tech and government, breaks down Palantir’s ties to immigration enforcement. She explains Foundry, Immigration OS and ELITE. She also describes data sources, embedded engineers, internal staff confusion, and how Palantir’s public storytelling masks its government reach.
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Palantir Succeeds By Gluing Data And Placing Engineers
- Palantir sells Foundry as a powerful data-integration platform that merges many government and commercial sources for search and analysis.
- The value comes less from novel algorithms and more from combining disparate feeds and expert forward-deployed engineers who embed with clients.
Immigration OS Is A Multifunction Deportation Ecosystem
- Immigration OS is an ICE-focused ecosystem Palantir is building to track self-deportations, prioritize targets, and streamline deportation logistics.
- It started with CBP Home self-deportation tracking and expanded into broader targeting and logistics tools for ICE and DHS.
Adding IRS And SSA Data Would Deeply Expand Surveillance
- Palantir-enabled databases ingest DHS, USCIS and other federal sources and seek to add IRS and SSA data to improve address and identity matching.
- Using IRS/SSA data for immigration tracking is highly sensitive and runs into privacy rules and recent erroneous IRS disclosures.