WIRED reports that a newly and partially unsealed court filing says the U.S. Department of Homeland Security built dossiers on people who observed Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including photos, license-plate numbers, and other information, and stored them in a system called the Investigative Case Management database. Palantir built that database. Palantir did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The filing was submitted under seal in September, and a redacted version was made public on Friday. It focuses on an enforcement surge in Maine this past January called Operation Catch of the Day. It is part of a proposed class action in federal court in Maine brought by four observers: Elinor Hilton, Colleen Fagan, Polyxenia Pantos, and Carlyn Williams.

[1]
A cream card lies over a gray card on a white wall, with a loose coil of red cord beside them.
Two blank cards overlap, and the red cord is only coiled, not tied. That is an allegation of records being kept, with no ruling yet. An illustration, not a photograph of a case file., AI-generated illustration, not a news photograph

A DHS spokesperson calls the case meritless and says the underlying lawsuit is based on the lie that DHS runs a database of domestic terrorists. Todd Lyons, the former acting director of ICE, wrote in an April letter to Rep. Maxwell Frost, a Florida Democrat, that ICE does not maintain any kind of database of U.S. citizens protesting its activities. The government’s motion to dismiss says these were isolated incidents, that department policy prohibits the conduct, and that the agent did not try to nominate anyone to the terrorist watchlist.

[1]

The filing says agents had a practice of intimidating protesters and observers, including drive-bys of observers’ homes. At least one observer was to be referred to secondary inspection any time she tried to cross the border, until at least January 2027. The filing also says an agent identified as J.C. created database records on at least six observers; the government puts the number at eight. He labeled two people he filmed in a Home Depot parking lot as a threat to law enforcement and as professional protesters, and sent photos of them and of others to a Customs and Border Protection officer so the officer could run a facial-recognition search. The article names the app used for that search. The steps are not repeated here.

[1]

The observers are asking the court to order that Williams’s records be archived, to bar DHS from using the information it collected against these plaintiffs, and to prohibit agents in Maine from threatening observers with watchlists or following them home. The article also gives the contract history of the system: in 2014 ICE awarded Palantir the contract to build it, on the company’s Gotham software; in 2022 it awarded a new five-year support contract initially valued at up to about $96 million; in 2025 it added nearly $30 million to develop a new platform called ImmigrationOS. Those are contract amounts, not damages found in this filing.

[1]

要点

  • The unsealed filing says observers’ photos, plate numbers, and other information were stored in a case-management database built by Palantir.
  • DHS calls the case meritless and denies a database of domestic terrorists. A former acting director’s letter also says there is no database of protesters.
  • The filing says at least one person faces secondary border inspection until January 2027, and that photos were sent for facial recognition. The observers want the records archived and the information barred from later use.