A new agreement indicates Palantir is developing a technology solution for an additional government department that collaborates with ICE.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an entity responsible for services such as naturalization requests, immigration for families, adoptions, and employment authorizations for non-nationals, initiated an agreement with Palantir in late October. This agreement compensates the data analytics firm for deploying “Phase 0” of a “vetting of wedding-based schemes,” or “VOWS” system, as detailed in the government contract. This contract was published on the official U.S. Government portal and examined by Coins2Day.

This agreement is minor, valued under $100,000, and specifics regarding the new system's components are scarce. The agreement provides limited information, beyond a broad outline of the system (“vetting of wedding-based schemes”) and an anticipated completion date of December 9th. Palantir chose not to discuss the agreement or the project's scope, and USCIS failed to reply to inquiries for this report.

However, the agreement stands out because it signifies the commencement of a fresh partnership between USCIS and Palantir. Palantir has maintained enduring agreements with ICE, another entity within the Department of Homeland Security, dating back to at least 2011. The details of the contract imply that the “VOWS” system might indeed concentrate on marital deception and align with USCIS's recent declared objective to investigate thoroughly any dishonesty in applications for marriage and family-based claims, work permits, and requests for parole.

USCIS has openly discussed its recent partnership with ICE. During a nine-day span in September, USCIS announced that it cooperated with ICE and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to carry out what it termed “Operation Twin Shield” in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region, where immigration authorities looked into possible instances of deception in applications for immigration benefits that the agency had processed. The agency stated that its personnel forwarded 42 cases to ICE throughout that timeframe. In a declaration posted on the USCIS website soon after the initiative, USCIS head Joseph Edlow stated his organization was “declaring an all-out war on immigration fraud” and that it intended to “relentlessly pursue everyone involved in undermining the integrity of our immigration system and laws.” 

“Under President Trump, we will leave no stone unturned,” he said.

At the beginning of this year, USCIS implemented changes to its policy stipulations for marriage-based green cards, incorporating enhanced specifics regarding proof of relationship and more rigorous interview protocols.

While Palantir has always been a controversial company—and one that tends to lean into that reputation no less—the new contract with USCIS is likely to lead to more public scrutiny. Backlash over Palantir’s contracts with ICE have intensified this year amid the Trump Administration’s crackdown on immigration and aggressive tactics used by ICE to detain immigrants that have gone viral on social media. Not to mention, Palantir inked a $30 million contract with ICE earlier this year to pilot a system that will track individuals who have elected to self-deport and help ICE with targeting and enforcement prioritization. There has been pushback from current and former employees of the company alike over contracts the company has with ICE and Israel.

In a recent interview at the New York Times DealBook Summit, Palantir CEO Alex Karp was asked on stage about Palantir’s work with ICE and later what Karp thought, from a moral standpoint, about families getting separated by ICE. “Of course I don’t like that, right? No one likes that. No American. This is the fairest, least bigoted, most open-minded culture in the world,” Karp said. But he said he cared about two issues politically: immigration and “re-establishing the deterrent capacity of America without being a colonialist neocon view. On those two issues, this president has performed.”