For years, the **EFF** has pushed technology companies to make real human rights commitments—and to live up to them. In response to growing evidence that **Palantir**’s tools help power abusive immigration enforcement by **ICE**, they sent the company a detailed letter asking how the promises in its own human rights framework extends to that work. This post explains what they asked, how Palantir responded, and why they believe those responses fall short. EFF is not alone in raising alarms about Palantir; immigrants' rights groups, human rights organizations, journalists, and former employees have raised similar concerns based on reports of the company's role in abusive immigration enforcement. They focus here on Palantir’s own human rights promises. At the outset, the EFF appreciates that Palantir was willing to engage respectfully, and they recognize that confidentiality and security obligations can limit what it can say. Nonetheless, measured against **Palantir's** own human rights commitments, its decision to keep powering ICE with tools used in dragnet raids and discriminatory detentions is indefensible. A good-faith application of those commitments should lead Palantir to end its contract with ICE, and refuse new, or end current, contracts with any other agency whose work predictably violates those commitments. ### **Palantir’s Public Promises** Palantir has long said it performs comprehensive human rights analysis on its work. It has also worked with ICE for years, apparently in a more limited capacity than today. It has publicly embraced the **UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights**, the **Universal Declaration of Human Rights**, and the **OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises**. Additionally, in its response to EFF, Palantir says its legal responsibilities are only “the floor” for broader risk assessments. That was the point of the EFF's letter. They asked what human rights due diligence Palantir conducted when it first contracted with ICE and **DHS**; whether it performed the “proactive risk scoping” it advertises, how it reviews work over time, what it has done in response to reports of misuse, and whether it has used “every means at [its] disposal”—including contract provisions, third‑party oversight, and termination—to prevent or mitigate harms. For the most part, Palantir did not answer their accountability questions. It did correct one point: Palantir says it does not currently work with **CBP**, and available evidence supports that, though it also made clear it *could* work with CBP in the future. Palantir also raised a red herring it often deploys in response to criticism. It denied building a 'mega' or 'master' database for ICE and denied creating a database of protesters, which some ICE agents have claimed to have been built. The EFF calls it a red herring because those denials sidestep the central issues: what capabilities Palantir's tools actually provide to ICE. To be clear, EFF has never claimed that Palantir is building a single centralized database. Their concern is grounded in how Palantir’s tools allow ICE to query and analyze data from multiple databases through a unified interface—which from an agent’s perspective can be a distinction without a difference. In the sections that follow, the EFF compares Palantir’s account of its work for ICE with evidence about how its tools seem to be used, and explain why legality, internal process, and sustained “engagement with the institutions whose vital tasks exist in tension with certain human rights” are no substitute for real human rights due diligence—because respect for human rights must be measured by outcomes, not just process. ### **Palantir’s ICE Work Undermines Its Own Standards** Palantir says ICE uses its **ELITE** tool for “prioritized enforcement”: to surface likely addresses of specific people, such as individuals with final orders of removal or high‑severity criminal charges. But according to sworn testimony in Oregon, ICE agents use ELITE to determine where to conduct deportation sweeps, and the system “pulled from all kinds of sources” to identify locations for raids aimed at mass detentions, including information from the **Department of Health and Human Services** such as **Medicaid** data. A leaked ELITE user guide for 'Special Operations' also instructs operators to disable filters to "display all targets within a Special Operations dataset." Those details directly conflict with Palantir’s narrow description of ELITE’s role. Additionally, Palantir's response leans on legal authority and the Privacy Act. But it does not identify any specific lawful basis for using Medicaid data in this way or explain how its software enables that access. Even if a legal theory exists, turning sensitive medical information into fuel for dragnet sweeps is hard to reconcile with its commitments to privacy, equity, and the rights of impacted communities. Its own human rights framework requires grappling with foreseeable harms its products may enable, not just invoking possible legal authorization. Reporting shows that many people detained by ICE had no criminal record, much less a serious one, and in many cases no final order of removal. An overwhelming percentage of those detained were, or appeared to be, from Central and South America, and nearly one in five ICE arrests were street arrests of a Latine person with neither a criminal history nor a removal order. These facts raise obvious questions about discriminatory impact, racial profiling, and whether Palantir's tools are facilitating detention practices far broader than the company claims. Palantir's response does not meaningfully engage those questions, despite the company's commitments to non-discrimination and due process. EFF’s letter asked Palantir to explain how it is honoring its commitments to civil liberties in light of reports linking Palantir-owned systems to facial recognition and other tools used to identify and target people engaged in observing and recording law enforcement, including in connection with the deaths of Renée Good and Alex Pretti. The letter also cites an incident in which an officer scanned protesters’ and observers’ faces and threatened to add their biometrics to a “nice little database.” Palantir’s response denies involvement in any such database. A narrow denial about a single database does not answer the broader question: if ICE, its customer, claims it has this capability, what has Palantir done to ensure its tools are not used to chill protected speech, retaliate against observers, or facilitate targeting of people engaged in First Amendment‑protected activity? For a company that claims to value democracy and civil liberties, this is not a marginal issue; it goes to the heart of its human rights commitments. ### **Legality, Process, and Engagement with ICE Are Not Human Rights Standards** As mentioned above, Palantir leans heavily on legal compliance.