Your Health Data Is Helping ICE Find Homes to Raid

Palantir's ELITE app turns Medicaid records into deportation maps. Here's how it works.

TL;DR: ICE is using a Palantir app called ELITE that shows agents a map of deportation targets, complete with photos, addresses, and "confidence scores" for each location. The addresses come from the Department of Health and Human Services, including Medicaid data for 80 million patients. ICE agents testified they prioritize "target-rich areas" where multiple people cluster together. Your doctor's visit is now helping ICE plan neighborhood raids.

What ELITE Actually Does

On January 15, 2026, 404 Media published an investigation based on internal ICE documents, public procurement records, and sworn testimony from ICE officers [1].

The tool is called Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement (ELITE). According to ICE's own user guide:

"ELITE is a targeting tool designed to improve capabilities for identifying and prioritizing high-value targets through advanced analytics."

What agents see when they open the app:

  • A map populated with potential deportation targets
  • Individual dossiers on each person
  • Name, date of birth, Alien Registration Number
  • A photograph
  • A "confidence score" from 0-100 on how certain ICE is about the address

The app has a "Geospatial Lead Sourcing Tab" that lets agents filter targets by criteria like "Bios & IDs," "Criminality," "Location," and "Operations." Agents can select people one by one, or draw a shape on the map to see everyone in that area.

"Target-Rich Areas"

In sworn testimony during an Oregon court case, an ICE Fugitive Operations Unit officer explained how agents actually use the app [2]:

"You're going to go to a more dense population rather than... like, if there's one pin at a house and the likelihood of them actually living there is like 10 percent... you're not going to go there."

Translation: ICE uses ELITE to find neighborhoods where lots of potential targets cluster together. A single person with a low confidence score? Not worth the trip. A block with multiple pins? That's a raid.

The confidence scores come from cross-referencing addresses across multiple government databases. Which brings us to the Medicaid problem.

Where the Data Comes From

According to 404 Media and the EFF, ELITE pulls address data from the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services [3][4].

A data-sharing agreement between DHS and CMS gives ICE access to personal information on approximately 80 million Medicaid patients.

The agreement was disclosed through a lawsuit filed by multiple states against DHS and HHS, not through FOIA. 404 Media and the Freedom of the Press Foundation had sued DHS for the document, but the agency never provided it. A U.S. attorney eventually pointed them to the document in the other lawsuit [5].

Other data sources feeding ELITE:

  • U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services databases
  • Thomson Reuters CLEAR investigation software
  • IRS records (via ImmigrationOS)
  • Driver's license databases
  • Utility records

Medicaid data wasn't supposed to be used this way. CMS rules historically permitted sharing only to "administer a federal health benefits program" or investigate "waste, fraud, or abuse of the program." ICE does neither.

The Money Trail

ELITE is part of a larger system called ImmigrationOS. Here's how the contracts stack up:

  • April 2025: ICE awarded Palantir a $30 million sole-source contract for ImmigrationOS [6]
  • September 25, 2025: An additional $29.9 million supplemental agreement, which explicitly mentions ELITE [1]
  • Total: Nearly $60 million for a "prototype" that was never competitively bid

ICE's justification for skipping competitive bidding: Palantir is the "only source" capable of delivering the system because they've been building ICE's surveillance infrastructure since 2013.

Translation: Palantir is so embedded in ICE that no one else can even compete for the contract.

The $28.7 Billion Surveillance Budget

ELITE is just one tool in ICE's arsenal. According to the EFF's January 2026 analysis, ICE's current budget is $28.7 billion, nearly triple their 2024 budget [7].

Other recent surveillance contracts:

  • Cellebrite: $11 million for phone unlocking and data extraction
  • Paragon Solutions: $2 million for Graphite spyware that harvests encrypted messages from Signal and WhatsApp
  • Pen Link: $5 million for location tracking and social media surveillance
  • Clearview AI: $10 million for facial recognition
  • Thomson Reuters: $6 million for license plate reader data

If funded over three years at current levels, ICE would spend at least $56.25 billion, enough to rank as the 14th most-funded military force on Earth.

Why This Matters Beyond Immigration

When people fear their health data will be used against them, they stop going to the doctor.

Medicaid serves low-income families, pregnant women, elderly patients, and people with disabilities. Many Medicaid recipients are U.S. citizens. Many live in mixed-status families.

If your address shows up in ELITE because your grandmother used Medicaid, your whole household becomes a potential target. The app doesn't distinguish between citizens and non-citizens. It just shows pins on a map.

Civil liberties groups have warned for years that linking healthcare data to immigration enforcement would undermine public health. Now we have the receipts.

What You Can Do

If you're on Medicaid or have family members who are:

  • Review what contact information is on file with your healthcare providers
  • Consider using a P.O. Box or alternative address for non-medical correspondence
  • Know that applying for Medicaid now feeds this system

For everyone:

  • Support organizations suing to block this data sharing (EFF, ACLU, state attorneys general)
  • Contact your representatives about the DHS-CMS data agreement
  • Read our guide on knowing your rights in ICE encounters

The problem isn't just that ICE has this data. It's that the data existed to help people get healthcare, and now it's being used to find them.

References

  1. 404 Media: 'ELITE': The Palantir App ICE Uses to Find Neighborhoods to Raid (January 15, 2026)
  2. The New Republic: ICE Is Using a Terrifying Palantir App to Determine Where to Raid (January 2026)
  3. EFF: Report: ICE Using Palantir Tool That Feeds On Medicaid Data (January 2026)
  4. EFF: ICE Is Going on a Surveillance Shopping Spree (January 2026)
  5. 404 Media: Here is the Agreement Giving ICE Medicaid Patients' Data (January 2026)
  6. ExecutiveGov: Palantir Lands ICE Contract for ImmigrationOS Support (2025)
  7. EFF: ICE Is Going on a Surveillance Shopping Spree (January 2026)

Published: January 22, 2026