ICE and Palantir: US agents using health data to hunt illegal immigrants

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Source: BMJ

Original: http://www.bmj.com/content/392/bmj.s168.short?rss=1...

Published: 2026-01-27T02:56:21-08:00

U.S. immigration agents from ICE use the Elite app, developed by Palantir, which draws data from the health records of millions of Americans, to identify and detain illegal immigrants. The app integrates data from HHS and other commercial or public sources to map areas for raids. Testimony from ICE officials and internal documents confirm this, according to a 404 Media investigation. ICE recently conducted an October raid in Oregon that arrested 30 people. The Trump administration gave ICE the personal information of 79 million Medicaid recipients, including addresses and ethnicity, for immigration tracking. Palantir has been awarded a $30 million contract by ICE to develop the ImmigrationOS platform for identifying, tracking and deporting priority individuals. In December 2025, ICE held 68,440 people in custody, of which almost 40,000 did not have a criminal record. Between January and December 2025, ICE arrested over 328,000 people and deported nearly 327,000 people.[1][2][3][4][5]