DHS Opens a Billion-Dollar Tab With Palantir

The Department of Homeland Security reached a billion-dollar purchase deal with Palantir last week, boosting the software company’s role within the federal agency that oversees immigration enforcement in the country.

According to contract documents released last week, the awarded blanket purchase agreement (BPA) “is intended to provide department-wide Palantir commercial software licenses, maintenance and implementation services.” The agreement simplifies how DHS purchases software from Palantir, allowing DHS agencies such as Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to avoid the competitive bidding process for new purchases of up to $1 billion in products and services from the company.

Palantir did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Palantir announced the deal internally on Friday. This comes as the company struggles to deal with growing tensions among staff over its relationships with DHS and ICE. After Minneapolis nurse Alex Pretti was shot and killed in January, Palantir employees flooded the company’s Slack channels demanding information on how the technology they are building strengthens immigration enforcement in the United States. Since then, the company has updated its internal wiki, offering some previously unseen details about its work with ICE, and Palantir CEO Alex Karp recorded a video for employees in which he attempted to justify the company’s immigration work, as WIRED reported last week. During a nearly hour-long conversation with Courtney Bowman, Palantir’s global director of privacy and civil liberties engineering, Karp failed to answer direct questions about how the company’s technology powers ICE. Instead, he said workers could sign nondisclosure agreements to get more detailed information.

Akash Jain, Palantir’s chief technology officer and president of Palantir US Government Partners, which works with US government agencies, acknowledged these concerns in the email announcing the company’s new agreement with DHS. “I recognize that this comes at a time of growing concern, both externally and internally, about our current work with ICE,” Jain wrote. “While we don’t normally send out updates on new vehicles under contract, it seems especially important at this time to provide context to help you understand what this means – and what it doesn’t mean. There will be opportunities we run towards and others we turn down – this discipline is part of what has earned us the trust of DHS.”

In Friday’s email, Jain suggests the five-year deal could allow the company to expand its reach within DHS to agencies such as the U.S. Secret Service (USSS), Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

Jain also argued that Palantir’s software could strengthen protections for American citizens. “These protections help enable accountability through strong controls and auditing capabilities, and support respect for constitutional protections, particularly the Fourth Amendment,” Jain wrote. (Critics of Palantir have argued that the company’s tools create a massive surveillance network, which could ultimately harm civil liberties.)

Over the past year, Palantir’s work with ICE has grown significantly. Last April, WIRED reported that ICE paid Palantir $30 million to create “ImmigrationOS,” which would provide “near real-time visibility” into immigrants self-deported from the United States. Since then, it has been reported that the company has also developed a new tool called Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement (ELITE) that creates maps of potential deportation targets, pulling data from DHS and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Closing out his Friday email to staff, Jain suggested that staffers curious about the new DHS agreement come and work on it themselves. “As Palantirians, the best way to understand the work is to engage directly with the work. If you would like to help shape and deliver the next chapter of Palantir’s work at DHS, please contact us,” Jain wrote to the employees, who are sometimes referred to internally as fictional creatures of Lord of the Rings. “There will be a massive need for committed hobbits to turn this momentum into mission outcomes.”