John,
Big Tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s company Palantir has raked in over $113 million in federal contracts since Trump took office, including millions to build an Operating System for ICE.[1][2] These contracts fuel raids, deportations, and family separations, and they’re being funded with cuts to vital services like Medicaid and SNAP that millions of families depend on.
This is a taxpayer-funded war on immigrant communities. ICE raids powered by Palantir tech are terrorizing schools and workplaces. Even more alarming, data from Medicaid is now being funneled into these systems, creating a mega-database of personal information that facilitates mass deportations and surveillance.
The Thiel-Trump pipeline is a well-oiled machine. According to a new Americans for Tax Fairness report, the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law handed Palantir’s CEO, billionaire Alexander Karp, up to $86 million in tax breaks[3], and Thiel himself continues to dodge taxes on billions held in a Roth IRA, a tax-free piggy bank created by gaming the system. While they and other billionaires pocket windfalls, Republicans slash more than $1 trillion from Medicaid and SNAP to make room in the budget for this surveillance bonanza.
This is a vicious cycle of austerity and authoritarianism. Billionaires exploit the tax code, then turn around and profit from the very cuts they engineer. Palantir is expanding into every corner of government, using our public dollars to surveil us, while low-income families are left without food or healthcare.
Help stop the mass surveillance that targets immigrants by telling Congress to end the tax breaks and public contracts that are making Peter Thiel and Palantir rich at our expense.
The more programs Republicans defund, the more “savings” they can redirect toward immigration enforcement. They’re gutting Medicaid and SNAP, then using it to bankroll Thiel’s contracts. And when you track the money, it always leads back to the same billionaire oligarchs getting rich at our expense.
Palantir’s entrenchment in federal agencies goes far beyond ICE. Its Foundry platform is now embedded in the Department of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, and even the IRS, creating vast, interconnected systems that blur the line between data integration and digital surveillance.
Congress must intervene, not just to halt new contracts, but to roll back this authoritarian surveillance state being built with our own money. We need hearings, subpoenas, audits, and defunding. If left unchecked, this profit-driven data empire will continue to grow, backed by slashed social services, protected by tax loopholes, and turbocharged by government complicity.
We’ve exposed how Palantir’s surveillance tools are built on taxpayer dollars and powered by tax giveaways. Now we must act. The fight against deportations and the fight for tax justice are one and the same.
We can stop Trump’s attacks on immigrant communities by cutting off the taxpayer dollars and tax breaks that fuel Palantir’s deportation machine. Tell Congress to end this corrupt pipeline of public money.
Let’s put an end to the democratic crisis where billionaires build the very machinery used to police and punish the poor.
David Kass
Executive Director
Americans for Tax Fairness Action Fund
[1] Trump Taps Palantir to Compile Data on Americans
[2] Palantir's partnership with ICE deepens
[3] Palantir CEO May Have Saved $86 Million From GOP Tax Bill
