Palantir, the artificial intelligence and data analytics company, has quietly started working on a tech platform for a federal immigration agency that has referred dozens of individuals to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for potential enforcement since September.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency—which handles services including citizenship applications, family immigration, adoptions, and work permits for non-citizens—started the contract with Palantir at the end of October, and is paying the data analytics company to implement “Phase 0” of a “vetting of wedding-based schemes,” or “VOWS” platform, according to the federal contract, which was posted to the U.S. government website and reviewed by Fortune.
The contract is small—less than $100,000—and details of what exactly the new platform entails are thin. The contract itself offers few details, apart from the general description of the platform (“vetting of wedding-based schemes”) and an estimate that the completion of the contract would be Dec. 9. Palantir declined to comment on the contract or nature of the work, and USCIS did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
But the contract is notable, nonetheless, as it marks the beginning of a new relationship between USCIS and Palantir, which has had longstanding contracts with ICE, another agency of the Department of Homeland Security, since at least 2011. The description of the contract suggests that the “VOWS” platform may very well be focused on marriage fraud and related to USCIS’ recent stated effort to drill down on duplicity in applications for marriage and family-based petitions, employment authorizations, and parole-related requests.
“Under President Trump, we will leave no stone unturned,” he said.
Earlier this year, USCIS rolled out updates to its policy requirements for marriage-based green cards, which have included more details of relationship evidence and stricter interview requirements.
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.”
