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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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

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