Inside an American government data centre, a system called ImmigrationOS is assembling a stranger’s life.
It reaches for a passport record, then a Social Security file, then a year of tax returns, then a licence-plate read captured by a motorway camera, and it stitches them into a single profile that tells an enforcement officer whom to find next.
The system does not know the person, but it knows the data, and it works with that data regardless, as critics have noted, of the veracity or accuracy of the databases it draws from.
ImmigrationOS was built by Palantir Technologies under a $30 million contract with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with a prototype due in September 2025 and the work running through 2027.
It is one of the clearest expressions of what the company actually does for a living. Which is worth holding in mind, because on 3 August 2026, in a letter to shareholders, Palantir’s chief executive, Alex Karp, reached for a much older frame of reference.
