Immigration and Customs Enforcement is deploying a Palantir-designed system called ELITE that generates probability scores for where undocumented immigrants are likely to be found, then maps neighborhoods for agents to target based on Medicaid records of nearly 80 million patients. The tool, part of a $30 million ImmigrationOS contract awarded in April 2025, represents a significant shift in ICE’s enforcement strategy from individual-address targeting to neighborhood-scale sweeps.
From Individual Warrants to Neighborhood Sweeps
ELITE—Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement—assigns numerical confidence scores on a zero-to-100 scale to indicate how likely a specific individual is at a given address. Officers can draw boundaries around neighborhoods and return multiple potential targets at once, enabling agents to position themselves in areas where enforcement success is statistically higher rather than attempting to serve warrants at specific residences. The system integrates Medicaid data with IRS tax records, passport files, license plate readers, and state databases to construct individual profiles.
The Medicaid data-sharing arrangement emerged from last year’s agreement between ICE and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which allows federal immigration agents access to personal information on nearly 80 million Medicaid enrollees. In January 2026, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria ruled that basic biographical, location, and contact information could be shared with ICE, though he blocked the transfer of detailed medical records.
The judge wrote that policies governing the broader data sharing were “totally unclear about what that information would be, why it would be needed for immigration enforcement purposes, and what the risks of sharing it with DHS would be.”
The arrangement raises significant questions about government ethics. Stephen Miller, President Trump’s deputy chief of staff and homeland security advisor, disclosed between $100,001 and $250,000 in Palantir stock held in a brokerage account for one of his children. Don Fox, former general counsel of the Office of Government Ethics, told reporters that Miller could “easily become involved in policy matters that have a direct and predictable impact on Palantir.” The White House stated that Miller has confirmed to ethics officials he will recuse from matters affecting Palantir holdings.
ICE operates multiple surveillance systems in parallel. As of May 2025, the agency reported 23 active AI software programs, though several were later deactivated. Privacy advocates argue that ImmigrationOS consolidates surveillance capabilities once dispersed across individual systems. The Electronic Frontier Foundation noted that the Social Security Act requires Medicaid data sharing only for purposes directly connected with plan administration—a standard the EFF argues ICE enforcement does not meet. The contract runs through September 2027.
