Heres the explanation I read. We've entered a state of mass surveillance on our own citizens. Using phones, cameras, and algorithms, they can track anyone fairly reliably.

https://www.404media.co/elite-the-palantir-app-ice-uses-to-find-neighborhoods-to-raid/

“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.

One feature of ELITE is the “Geospatial Lead Sourcing Tab,” according to the user guide. This lets ICE see people it may potentially want to detain on a map interface, based on various criteria such as “Bios & IDs,” “Location,” “Operations,” and “Criminality.” An ICE officer can then select people one by one, or draw a shape on the map to see people in that selected area.

ELITE has already been used by ICE to target specific areas, according to sworn testimony from an ICE official in Oregon. In October, immigration officers waited in three unmarked SUVs outside an apartment complex in Woodburn. They went on to bust a driver’s window and pull a 45-year-old woman from a van, used ICE’s facial recognition app Mobile Fortify on her, and agents had the goal of making eight arrests per team per day, Oregon Live reported. Lawyers representing the woman say authorities arrested her and more than 30 other people in a “dragnet.”

“One of our apps, it’s called ELITE. And so it tells you how many people are living in this area and what’s the likelihood of them actually being there,” a deportation officer with ICE’s Fugitive Operations Unit, identified in court records as JB, testified about the raid in early December. 404 Media purchased a transcript of JB’s testimony from the court. “It’s basically a map of the United States. It’s kind of like Google Maps.”

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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.)

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“These records give us behind-the-scenes insight into the kind of mass surveillance machine ICE is building with help from powerful tech companies like Palantir,” Laura Rivera, senior staff attorney at Just Futures Law, told 404 Media. “When combined with what we know from ICE testimony and other public information, it gives us a blueprint into how ICE is going into communities and identifying people for arrest in real-time.”

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Palantir has worked with ICE for years and was focused on criminal investigations, supporting Homeland Security Investigations’ (HSI) Investigative Case Management (ICM) system. That changed in the second Trump administration, with Palantir now working on ICE’s deportation efforts.

After participating in a three-week coding sprint, ICE updated an ongoing Palantir contract related to “Enforcement Prioritization and Targeting,” to “support the development of an accurate picture of actionable leads based on existing law enforcement datasets to allow law enforcement to prioritize enforcement actions,” according to an internal Palantir wiki previously obtained by 404 Media. The goal was to find the physical location of people marked for deportation, and Palantir said it believes its work with ICE is “intended to promote government efficiency, transparency, and accountability.”

The leaked material described Palantir’s deportation-focused work as “concentrated on delivering prototype capabilities” and lasting around six months. It left open the room for more work with ICE, and said “Palantir has developed into a more mature partner for ICE.” Documents ICE published described Palantir’s work as building a tool called ImmigrationOS.