‘Uncanny Valley’: ICE’s Secret Expansion Plans, Palantir Workers’ Ethical Concerns, and AI Assistants
Brian Barrett: They have about 80 billion to spend, 75 billion of which I think they will have to spend over the next four years. So yes, they will continue to expand. And when you think about the impact that 3,000 officers had in Minneapolis alone, that’s about an eighth of the impact, they can repeat some version of that in many different places.
Léa Feiger: And I have, honestly, shouted out to the many local journalists across the country who have reached out to me over the last few days, just to ask about the places that we’ve named that are near them or in their states or cities. And what keeps coming back to me is that in addition to the new buildings, they’re integrated into pre-existing government buildings, into pre-existing leases, or what seems to be the plan. And then we also found that a number of these ICE offices are located near proposed giant immigrant detention warehouses, and we’re looking at putting up offices, say 20 minutes, an hour and 20 minutes away for those. Yeah. So we’re looking at different things, triangulating that around you have to have your lawyers, your agents, have a place to get their orders and set up their computers and somehow do very mundane things that are required in an operation like this.
Brian Barrett: Well, Leah, that’s a good point. I think when people hear about ICE offices or when I do instinctively, I think of ICE as guys with guns and masks and all that, but that’s not exactly what we’re saying here. Would you mind explaining to us why these desks appear to be used in queues and by whom? Because ICE isn’t just masked guys with bad tattoos.
Léa Feiger: Yes, absolutely. So what we also reported in this story are some of the specific parties within ICE that have contacted GSA and asked them to expedite the process of getting new leases, et cetera, including, for example, where Ola representatives, Ola is the office of ICE’s principal legal counsel. So these are the lawyers, these are the ICE lawyers who work with the courts and argue deportation orders saying yes, no, et cetera, signing the documents, submitting everything before the judges. This is a very important part of this whole operation that we don’t talk about much. There’s a lot of focus on the DOJ. There is a lot of concentration. There was a great article this week in Politico talking about all these federal judges who are really, really upset that DHS and ICE are ignoring their requests that immigrants no longer be detained.
What’s missing are the lawyers who are part of this and represent ICE to the US government here, and that’s ola. So they’ve been reaching out to GSA extensively as we report to get those rental locations, especially with OLA’s legal request. I just want to get across how important this is. ICE has repeatedly highlighted its expansion into cities around the United States. And this memorandum that we received from Ola indicated that ICE would expand its legal operations to Birmingham, Alabama, Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers, Jacksonville and Tampa, Des Moines, Iowa, Boise, Idaho, Louisville, Kentucky, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Grand Rapids, Michigan, St. Louis, Missouri, rally, North Carolina, Long Island, New York, Columbus, Ohio, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Charleston and Columbia, South Carolina, Nashville, Tennessee, Richmond, Virginia, Spokane, Washington and Cord Delaine, Idaho and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We also have other locations in the rest of the article, but these are OLA’s requests.
