"‘ELITE’: The Palantir App ICE Uses to Find Neighborhoods to Raid" 15 January 2026

Palantir is working on a tool for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a “confidence score” on the person’s current address, 404 Media has learned. ICE is using it to find locations where lots of people it might detain could be based.

The findings, based on internal ICE material obtained by 404 Media, public procurement records, and recent sworn testimony from an ICE official, show the clearest link yet between the technological infrastructure Palantir is building for ICE and the agency’s activities on the ground...

...“Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement (ELITE) is a targeting tool designed to improve capabilities for identifying and prioritizing high-value targets through advanced analytics,” a user guide for ELITE obtained by 404 Media says. The tool aims to be nearly all encompassing when it comes to finding ICE targets, from identifying subjects in the first place, to building a list of people, to supervisors approving selections for officers to ultimately go into the field and apprehend...

...Last week ICE officer Jonathan Ross shot and killed 37 year old U.S. citizen Renee Nicole Good. During Operation Metro Surge, which DHS calls the “largest immigration operation ever,” immigration agents have surrounded rideshare drivers and used pepper spray on high school students...

...Once a person is selected on the map interface, ELITE then shows a dossier on that particular person, according to the user guide. That includes their name, a photo, their Alien Number (the unique code given by the U.S. government to each immigrant), their date of birth, and their full address. ELITE notes the source of the address (such as the government agency that supplied it), and gives an “address confidence score.” One address confidence score example in the guide is 98.95 out of 100; another is 77.25 out of 100. This score is based on both the source of the address and how recent the data is, the user guide says. (ICE is paying skip tracers, private investigators, and bounty hunters to help verify peoples’ addresses.)

Those sources can include HHS, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and “CLEAR.” The guide does not provide any more specifics on what CLEAR might be, but ICE has repeatedly contracted with Thomson Reuters which sells a data product called CLEAR. Thomson Reuters did not respond to a request for comment. HHS did not respond to a request for comment...

...Senator Ron Wyden, told 404 Media in a statement, “The fact ICE is using this app proves the completely indiscriminate nature of the agency's aggressive and violent incursions into our communities. This app allows ICE to find the closest person to arrest and disappear, using government and commercial data, with the help of Palantir and Trump's Big Brother databases. It makes a mockery of the idea that ICE is trying to make our country safer. Rather, agents are reportedly picking people to deport from our country the same way you'd choose a nearby coffee shop.”..

...Neither Palantir nor DHS responded to multiple requests for comment...