An immigrant rights and advocacy group has filed a lawsuit against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) seeking records related to the agency\u2019s use of Palantir tools. 404 Media first revealed a tool called ELITE and its links to Palantir in January, based in part on a leaked user guide for ELITE. ICE uses ELITE to find which neighborhoods to raid, according to testimony from an ICE official.\u201cThe requested records include information of great national significance, and will detail the ways Defendants have made use of Palantir\u2019s technology products to centralize, analyze, and visualize data around individuals residing in the United States and their social relationships to identify target individuals and communities in highly publicized immigration raids,\u201d Just Futures Law wrote in its complaint filed on Thursday.\u00a0\ud83d\udca1Do you know work at Palantir or ICE? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.The lawsuit follows a Just Futures Law Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking related documents. The lawsuit also targets the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).Just Futures Law is seeking, among other things, unredacted copies of communications between ICE and Palantir discussing various tools and systems, including ImmigrationOS; communications between ICE and members of DOGE discussing the systems (DOGE was working on a \u201cmaster database\u201d to track immigrants, WIRED reported); memorandums of agreement and similar between ICE, DOGE, and other agencies; copies of the specific Palantir contracts; training material about ImmigrationOS; and presentations created by ICE discussing the systems.As 404 Media reported, ELITE, or Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement, populates a map with potential deportation targets, and provides ICE users with a dossier on each person. It also provides a \u201cconfidence score\u201d on that person\u2019s current address. Other criteria available on the map include \u201cBios & IDs,\u201d \u201cLocation,\u201d \u201cOperations,\u201d and \u201cCriminality.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
404 Media purchased a transcript from a case in Oregon in which a deportation officer with ICE\u2019s Fugitive Operations Unit, identified in the court records as JB, said ELITE is \u201cbasically a map of the United States. It\u2019s kind of like Google Maps.\u201dJB said ELITE is what ICE uses to track the apparent density of people in a particular location. \u201cYou\u2019re going to go to a more dense population rather than […] like, if there\u2019s one pin at a house and the likelihood of them actually living there is like 10 percent […] you\u2019re not going to go there,\u201d he added.Organizations and journalists sometimes file FOIA lawsuits as a way to force an agency to comply with their legal obligations to provide the requested records in a timely manner. 404 Media recently published records from our ongoing lawsuit against ICE regarding its $2 million spyware contract.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"