August 20, 2019

ICE Accidentally Just Revealed How Much its New Contract With Peter Thiel’s Palantir Is Worth

Oops.

Palantir founder Peter Thiel, right, listens as then President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with technology industry leaders.Evan Vucci/AP

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Immigrations and Customs Enforcement renewed its contract with the software company Palantir, according to new government documents made public on Monday, and it could be worth some $49 million over the next three years.

But that number isn’t intentionally public.

The documents, posted online, were redacted to hide information about the size of the contract for case management software. However, through what appears to be a mistake in the redaction process, when copy-and-pasting text from the government document into a word processor, the financial figures are revealed. (A similar embarrassing screw up happened earlier year in a filing in the Paul Manafort case.)

The first year of the deal, from Sept. 2019 to Sept. 2020, is worth $16 million. The contract appears to give ICE the option to renew through 2022, and if it does, Palantir will make a base of over $14 million each year with a possible extra $2.5 million from 2020-2021 and $1.6 million from 2021-2022.

The deal is for Palantir’s Investigative Case Management or ICM software. Palantir has tried to distance its work with ICE from the agency’s work of deportations and family separations. However, documents revealed earlier this year show how Palantir’s software does in fact play a part in ICE’s deportations. 

ICE’s current contract with the company founded by Trump ally Peter Thiel was worth $41 million and has provided the software to the agency since 2014.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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