ICE Put Protester Photos in Palantir Database, Suit Says

A court filing made public Friday in Maine alleges that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents used a Palantir-built database to build files on people who were simply watching and recording ICE operations. The records reportedly included photographs, vehicle plate numbers, home addresses, phone numbers and more. The case is a proposed class action brought by four ICE observers, and as of April 27, 2026, it remains pending in federal court.

The plaintiffs say the government crossed a line. They argue that DHS agents treated peaceful documentation of immigration arrests as a form of criminal behavior. Their lawyers point to a practice that included surveillance of observers, unsolicited phone calls and threats about being placed on a domestic terrorism watchlist.

“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,” JoAnna Suriani, an attorney with Protect Democracy, said in the filing.

The lawsuit stems from events around “Operation Catch of the Day,” an immigration enforcement surge that took place in Maine in January 2025. Four women — Elinor Hilton, Colleen Fagan, Polyxenia Pantos and Carlyn Williams — filed the complaint in September under seal. A redacted version was released to the public on Friday.

The most detailed allegations involve an agent identified only as “J.C.” According to the filing, J.C. used the Investigative Case Management database, or ICM, to flag people who appeared at ICE arrest scenes. The ICM system was built by Palantir and is used by ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit to document case files.

The filing says J.C. created records for at least six observers, though the government puts the figure at eight. In one incident, he reportedly labeled two people filmed in a Home Depot parking lot with the phrase “Threat to Law Enforcement, Professional Protestor.” He then sent their photos to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer, who ran facial recognition searches using an app called Mobile Query.

One particularly detailed sequence took place on January 20, 2025. Pantos had stopped near an ICE arrest in Portland, Maine, standing a few car lengths away beside her spouse’s vehicle, and briefly took photographs. Hours later, the filing says, J.C. ran the car’s license plate and pulled a report from Accurint, a LexisNexis law enforcement database. That report listed the vehicle owner’s address, phone numbers and cohabitants. The registered owner was Williams.

J.C. then allegedly circulated Williams’s photo to his team, asking, “Was this the protestor.” Another agent responded that the photo did not match the woman he had dealt with at the scene. J.C. then told colleagues he was “adding them in ICM now.”

The filing also describes a phone call J.C. made to Williams that afternoon. He identified himself only as “the Department of Homeland Security.” Williams says he told her she should encourage Pantos “not to do anything like that in the future because people who are doing things like that might get added to a domestic terrorism watchlist.” J.C., in a deposition, said he warned Williams she would be arrested if she continued. Government attorneys later claimed he denied mentioning a “domestic terrorism watchlist.”

According to records produced by the government, Williams’s ICM entry says she was the registered owner of a vehicle used to “interrupt ICE arrests.” The file also says her driver’s license photo matched video of an “aggressive woman” who inserted herself into an arrest. Those records were not just stored in one system. A 2016 DHS privacy assessment noted that ICM automatically shares subject records with CBP’s TECS system, where they function as “lookout records” for border screening.

That kind of sharing matters. The plaintiffs argue it means a person flagged during a protest can face extra scrutiny at airports and border crossings indefinitely. In Williams’s case, the filing says she was referred to secondary inspection every time she tried to cross the border, and that was set to continue until at least January 2027.

The ICM system itself has grown into a major piece of ICE infrastructure. Palantir was awarded the contract to build ICM in 2014, using its Gotham software platform, customized for ICE’s operational needs. In 2022, ICE gave Palantir a new five-year support contract initially valued at up to roughly $96 million. Then, in 2025, the agency added nearly $30 million to develop a new platform called “ImmigrationOS.”

Palantir did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

DHS, for its part, called the lawsuit “meritless.” A spokesperson said the underlying case is based on “the lie that there is a database of ‘domestic terrorists’ run by DHS.” The government’s motion to dismiss argues that the incidents described were isolated and that DHS policy prohibits the behavior. It says J.C. created records only for people he believed were potential threats to law enforcement and never tried to nominate anyone for the terrorist watchlist.

Todd Lyons, then 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 ICE activities.” He also said DHS does not keep a “separate, standalone database” of people it has not arrested or detained. The plaintiffs’ attorneys say that misses the point. They contend that ICM itself can become a de facto watchlist when agents enter people with no pending charges, because those records automatically ripple into border screening systems.

The alleged chilling effect is already visible, according to the filing. Pantos stopped all ICE observation work after the phone call to Williams. Williams herself kept watching for a short while, then quit the activity entirely. The lawsuit asks the court to archive Williams’s records, block DHS from using the information collected about the plaintiffs, and prohibit agents in Maine from threatening observers with watchlists or following them home.

This case adds to a larger debate about how close federal law enforcement can get to people who are simply documenting government actions in public spaces. Legal experts say it could become a significant test of whether surveillance of First Amendment activity can be challenged as retaliation. Civil liberties organizations have increasingly warned that immigration enforcement systems are expanding beyond their original purpose, and this filing gives those concerns a concrete set of facts.

The redacted filing is dense and heavily reliant on internal government documents and agent depositions. That makes it unusual. Many surveillance lawsuits rely on inference or testimony from people who believe they were watched. This one includes references to specific database records, license plate queries and photographs shared between agents. The plaintiffs say the paper trail shows a pattern, not a one-off mistake.

Still, the court will have to decide whether the agents’ behavior was unlawful enough to let the class action move forward. DHS insists the agents were acting in good faith, trying to protect themselves and the public during volatile arrest operations. The plaintiffs counter that filming police activity in a public place is constitutionally protected, no matter how much agents may dislike it.

The case is being watched closely by immigrant rights groups, press freedom advocates and technology accountability researchers. The technology angle adds another layer: Palantir is already a familiar name in debates over government surveillance, and its ICM contract has drawn criticism for years. This lawsuit could force the company’s role in immigration enforcement back into public view.

For now, the plaintiffs are seeking relief that would affect only the four named women and a proposed class of observers in Maine. But the underlying questions reach further. Can federal agents create permanent records about people who have committed no crime? Can they share those records with border agencies? And can a tool built by a private contractor become the backbone of a watchlist that exists in everything but name?

Friday’s unsealed filing does not answer those questions, but it puts them sharply in focus. The next step will come in court, where a judge will decide whether the government’s motion to dismiss succeeds or whether the case proceeds toward discovery and, potentially, trial. Either way, the document has already provided one of the most detailed public looks yet at how ICE documents the people who document ICE.