During the height
of President Donald Trump’s winter immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis, a new AI-driven “alien” targeting app appeared on the phones of U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement deportation officers.
Created by tech giant Palantir, a CIA-backed firm known for
data mining
and using artificial intelligence for everything from warfighting to “
predictive policing
,”
the ELITE app helps ICE target immigrants and issues a “confidence score” for how accurate the information on a target is. The app
analyzes data
from government agencies and other sources, producing dossiers on targets, compiling them into lists, and mapping their locations.
The debut of ELITE — Enhanced Lead Identification and Targeting — came just as ICE
added over 12,000 employees
through an
expedited hiring surge
, placing a badge and a gun in the hands of new recruits in record time, thanks to
cuts to ICE’s training curriculum
.
Thousands of the new ICE hires, then, were able to hit the streets without cleared background checks, according to
reporting
by Reuters in early 2026.
“Some of these guys should’ve never been hired, let alone have access to the information on ELITE.”
The hiring spree at ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division, coupled with the powerful new handheld technology of the ELITE app, created potential civil liberties nightmares and threats to national security, according to ICE whistleblowers, former Department of Homeland Security officials, and legal experts who spoke to The Intercept.
“No one should have been hired by DHS before background reviews were completed. This never happened in previous administrations,” said Mary Ellen Callahan, former chief of staff to the deputy secretary of Homeland Security. “Furthermore, giving the newly hired ICE ERO staff access to sensitive databases such as ELITE threatens public safety by allowing non-vetted teams to access and potentially misuse data.”
The ELITE app, Callahan said,
… [more]
