The same company that started on CIA venture capital now runs ICE’s case management system, maps neighborhoods for raids, and pulls Medicaid data to find people to deport. The same venture capitalist who co-founded that company founded a think tank that writes the camping bans. His investment firm profits from the surveillance and detention companies that enforce them.
And the same investors—BlackRock, UBS, the Swiss National Bank—hold stock in both the software and the cells.
Palantir holds a $1 billion DHS blanket purchase agreement. Half of its $3.2 billion in contract obligations since 2024 came through no-bid deals. Its ELITE tool gives ICE a target list of 20 million people.
GEO Group and CoreCivic hold over 90% of ICE detainees. GEO’s 2025 net income was $120.1 million. CoreCivic’s was $116.5 million, up 70%. Both gained an additional $2 billion in profit.
In 2026 alone, ICE bought $3.2 billion in detention facilities from these companies—then let them keep operating the facilities. Congresswomen Jayapal and Randall wrote that the purchases “appear designed to evade state-level oversight.”
The same capital bets on both the software that tracks people and the cells that hold them. The same man—Joe Lonsdale—co-founded Palantir, founded the Cicero Institute, and invests in the defense and surveillance companies that profit from the laws he writes.
This isn’t coincidence. This is manufactured cruelty.