Many big data and tech firms have quietly cashed in on contracts with ICE, even as some of them publicly condemn the agency’s practices, including the border family separations, according to a Wednesday NBC News report.
These companies reportedly include Palantir, Microsoft, Thomson Reuters, Helwett Packard Enterprise and Motorola Solutions.
Palantir has a $39 million contract with ICE started in 2015 that entitles ICE to use its database that reportedly tracks immigrants’ records.
Microsoft’s contract gives ICE access to its extensive facial recognition technology, though the company distanced itself from the Trump administration’s family separations.
“As a company, Microsoft is dismayed by the forcible separation of children from their families at the border,” Microsoft said in a statement per NBC. “Family unification has been a fundamental tenet of American policy and law since the end of World War II.”
Thomson Reuters Special Services reportedly has a $6.8 million contract with ICE to supply “data to ICE in support of its work on active criminal investigations with the explicit purpose to focus resources on priority cases involving threats to public safety and/or national security,” per a Thomson Reuters spokesperson to NBC.
Since 2015, Hewlett Packard Enterprise has maintained a $75 million contract with Border Patrol (the umbrella above ICE) for management of BP’s network operations.
Per NBC, Motorola has a $13.3 million contract with ICE for a mysterious “tactical communications program.”
