Beyond Oversight: Palantir and the Making of a Controlled State

Alongside Trump’s continued ICE raids across America, his Administration is attacking immigration from a more insidious angle: surveillance. Through partnerships with Palantir and Magnet Forensics, coupled with reports of social media monitoring, the Trump administration is laying the groundwork for an expansive, connected infrastructure of control that operates beyond the bounds of accountability and democratic oversight. As Trump plans to monitor the lives of marginalised communities and international students in the name of immigration, a framework is being woven together to create a controlled state system of surveillance that tracks, profiles, and enforces policies across the US in real-time. 

Receiving more than $113 million in federal government spending since the beginning of Trump’s second administration, Palantir, a data-mining firm founded by Alex Karp and Peter Thiel, has expanded its ties to the government through contracts with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Pentagon, and the Department of Defense (DOD). Thiel, who has been described as having “authoritarian” and “nationalistic” political impulses, is a long-time Republican mega-donor and is known for his controversial stances and beliefs, including the notion that freedom and democracy are not “compatible.” These stances align with the company's work, as Palantir was awarded a $30 million contract by ICE to develop a surveillance platform called ImmigrationOS. 

ImmigrationOS, which is expected to present with a prototype by September 2025, is devastating in several ways, as its main functions include:

1. Streamlining the identification and apprehension of individuals prioritised for removal, such as "violent criminals," gang members, and visa overstays 

2. Tracking and reporting self-deportations with "near real-time visibility”

3. Enhancing deportation logistics by refining the identification and removal process of individuals from the U.S.

Palantir has also begun expanding its nigh on limitless reach with its work in merging data across agencies. Palantir’s Foundry, a platform that can organise, build apps, and run AI models, is merging data in departments such as DHS, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), as well as assisting the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in building a searchable government “mega-database,” in which the government will hold private information from Americans with no declared purpose. 

Since these projects began, with reports of collaboration with Elon Musk’s DOGE starting in April, only a few employees and 10 lawmakers have raised concerns about the potential risks of Palantir’s work. 

“Big Tech, including Palantir, is increasingly complicit, normalizing authoritarianism under the guise of a 'revolution’” led by oligarchs. “We must resist this trend,” reads a statement from former Palantir employees. 

“We are concerned that Palantir’s software could be used to enable domestic operations that violate Americans’ rights,” reads a letter signed by 10 Democratic lawmakers.

Even as the implications grow more alarming, Democrats and other advocates remain largely silent and in the dust, as the extent to which this surveillance system is unfolding remains in the shadows of the constant media cycles driven by the Trumpian rhetoric. 

For example, on June 24, DHS and ICE issued a notice for sole-source acquisition with Magnet Forensics, a software company specialising in developing products for advanced digital investigations. One of these products, Magnet Greykey, is a forensic access tool designed for “same-day, lawful access and extraction of encrypted data from mobile devices,” with some reports saying it could access partial data from iPhones running iOS 18 and 18.0.1. Since this notice, virtually all reporting on the topic has remained limited. 

Meanwhile, Trump’s surveillance has begun expanding to overt operations, including the social media monitoring of international students. As part of the process of applying for a visa, all students will need to set their social media profiles to “public,” with the failure to do so being grounds for rejection. This requirement not only allows access to students’ online lives for ongoing monitoring, but it’s part of a broader plan to track all anti-Trump behaviour, target dissenters, and enforce the policy. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, this practice will impact more than 33 million people, “including those applying for permanent residence or adjustment of their immigration status.”

Regarding ICE, this trend is becoming increasingly advanced, as ICE agents have begun using a new app to identify individuals through facial recognition in the field during raids. The app, Mobile Fortify, utilises an existing California Border Patrol system that captures photos of individuals entering or exiting the U.S. with “real-time biometric identity verification capabilities utilising contactless fingerprints and facial images captured by the camera on an ICE-issued cell phone without a secondary collection device,” according to an obtained email by 404 media. 

As lawmakers focus on the big details of Trump’s “big beautiful bill,” small changes such as requiring GPS monitoring for all non-detained immigrants until removal or legal resolution, or the elimination of migrant support programs go on in the background, unnoticed and silent. With the developing technological infrastructure aimed at serving the Trump administration’s big brother agenda, it remains unknown what impact this will have on a wider scale.

Image: reddit.com /tymofiy