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Lawsuit alleges a DHS agent logged Maine ICE observers in a Palantir-built case system
Four ICE observers allege in a partly unsealed filing that a DHS agent logged at least six observers in ICM, the case system Palantir built for ICE. Drawn largely from government documents, it traces how a plate lookup and a disputed photo match became a federal case record in one afternoon.
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What happened
- The filing belongs to a proposed class action by four observers over Operation Catch of the Day, a January immigration surge in Maine, and its redacted version became public on Friday.
- According to the filing, the agent tagged two people he filmed at a Home Depot parking lot as "Threat to Law Enforcement, Professional Protestor" and sent photos to a CBP officer for a facial recognition search.
- At least one observer, per the filing, must be referred to secondary inspection every time she crosses the border until at least January 2027.
- ICE's 2022 five-year support contract with Palantir for ICM was initially valued at up to about $96 million.
- A DHS spokesperson called the observers' case "meritless."
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Why it matters
- exposure Williams landed in a federal case record, per the filing, for owning the car her spouse stood beside, so people who live with observers can be pulled in without watching anything themselves.
- contradiction DHS calls the idea of a 'domestic terrorists' database a lie, yet the government counts eight people the agent entered, two more than the plaintiffs do, so the dispute is over what those records are for.
- precedent Other plaintiffs challenging surveillance of observers now have grounds to ask for named ICM entries in discovery, because the government produced Williams' entry in this case.
On January 20, Polyxenia Pantos briefly watched an arrest in Portland, Maine, and photographed it from a few car lengths away, standing beside their spouse's car [7]. Hours later, according to the filing, the agent identified as J.C. ran that car's plate. He pulled a report on its owner, Carlyn Williams, from Accurint, a LexisNexis database for law enforcement, and it listed her address, phone numbers and cohabitants [8].
J.C. then sent her photo to his team and asked, "Was this the protestor." [9] Another agent replied that it did not match the woman he had dealt with at the scene. J.C. told colleagues he was "adding them in ICM now," the filing says [9].
The government describes ICM as the case management system Homeland Security Investigations uses to document its investigations [10]. In the filing's account, it held the owner of a car parked near an arrest. Williams' entry comes from documents the government produced. It says she was the registered owner of a vehicle used to "interrupt ICE arrests," and that her driver's license photo matched a video of an aggressive woman interjecting herself into an arrest [11]. Per the filing, the colleague's reply disputing the match came before J.C. announced he was adding them [9].
According to a 2016 DHS privacy assessment, ICM automatically shares the subject records agents create with CBP's TECS system, where they act as "lookout records" for screening travelers at the border [12]. Wired's account does not say whether the observer's border referral came from an ICM entry.
That afternoon, the filing says, J.C. called Williams and identified himself only as "the Department of Homeland Security" [14]. Williams says he told her that "people who are doing things like that might get added to a domestic terrorism watchlist" [14]. J.C. testified in a deposition that he warned her she would be arrested if she "continue[d] to do this" [15]. Government attorneys said in a court filing that he denied referencing a "domestic terrorism watchlist" [15].
"The government is treating people who exercise their First Amendment rights and seek to hold it accountable as criminal suspects, and that's what we're asking the court to stop," said JoAnna Suriani, a Protect Democracy attorney representing the observers [16].
Two vendors' products sit in the January 20 account. Accurint supplied the address [8]. Palantir built ICM on its Gotham software under a 2014 contract, and ICE says that software was customized specifically for its operational needs [13]. The filing alleges conduct by agents. Palantir did not immediately respond to requests for comment [18].
The people who can act on this sit on the configuration side: whoever sets up a case system and decides what its records do. I think two questions sort every record type in a system like ICM. The first is how many people must agree before a record about a person exists, one user or a user plus a reviewer. The second is what the record does elsewhere with no further human step: nothing, or something that happens to the person, such as a border lookout. On that grid, the square to worry about is single-user creation with automatic downstream action. The Williams entry, as the filing describes it, was one agent's call after a colleague disputed the match, inside a system the 2016 assessment says shares subject records automatically [9][12]. I'd require a second reviewer for any record type in that square. The cost is a second person's time on every entry of that type, including the ones that belong to real investigations.
What to watch
- Whether the federal court in Maine certifies the observers' proposed class and restricts how agents create ICM records on people who watch arrests.
- Further unsealing that shows whether the observer's border referral through January 2027 came from an ICM lookout record shared with TECS.
- A response from Palantir, which had not commented when Wired published.