--- title: "ICE Agents Logged Maine Protest Watchers in a Palantir-Built Database, Suit Says" description: "Filings in a federal class action describe photos, home addresses and household members entered after a January immigration sweep" author: "rews desk" published: 2026-10-03T16:23:54Z modified: 2026-10-03T21:00:02Z url: https://rews.cc/a/ice-agents-logged-maine-protest-watchers-in-a-palantir-built-e16757 language: en tags: ["ice", "surveillance", "palantir", "privacy", "protest", "us"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # ICE Agents Logged Maine Protest Watchers in a Palantir-Built Database, Suit Says *Filings in a federal class action describe photos, home addresses and household members entered after a January immigration sweep* By rews desk · October 3, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/ice-agents-logged-maine-protest-watchers-in-a-palantir-built-e16757 ## In brief - Partially unsealed filings say ICE agents entered at least six people who observed Maine operations into the Palantir-built ICM system - One agent is accused of running a license plate through LexisNexis and pulling a bystander’s address, phone numbers and cohabitants - Two observers were labeled “Threat to Law Enforcement, Professional Protestor,” and photos went to CBP for facial-recognition searches - DHS calls the lawsuit meritless and says any such conduct was isolated and violated policy; the case is pending Federal immigration agents compiled dossiers on people who watched or photographed their operations in Maine and entered them into an investigative case-management system built by Palantir Technologies, according to a partially unsealed class action reported by Wired on Friday. The suit grows out of Operation Catch of the Day, an immigration-enforcement surge in Maine in January. An agent identified in the filings only as J.C. opened Investigative Case Management records on at least six observers, the plaintiffs say; the government’s own filings put the number at eight. The records allegedly included photographs, license plate numbers, home addresses, telephone numbers and the names of household members. Among the plaintiffs are Polyxenia Pantos, who photographed an arrest from a public sidewalk in Portland, near a vehicle registered to her spouse, Carlyn Williams. According to the filing, J.C. ran the license plate through Accurint, a LexisNexis law-enforcement database, pulled a report containing Ms. Williams’s address, phone numbers and cohabitants, circulated her photograph to colleagues and entered both women into the system, known as ICM. Ms. Williams says J.C. later called and warned her that people who “do anything like that in the future” might get added to a domestic-terrorism watchlist. In a deposition, J.C. denied using those words but said Ms. Williams could be arrested if she kept observing, according to the filing. The government says no plaintiff was nominated to the terrorist watchlist. Two other observers, filmed in a parking lot, were labeled in ICM as “Threat to Law Enforcement, Professional Protestor,” and their photographs were allegedly sent to a Customs and Border Protection officer for facial-recognition searches through an application called Mobile Query. ICM is Homeland Security Investigations’ case-management system, built on Palantir’s Gotham software. ICE awarded Palantir the original contract in 2014, and the company has since won roughly $126 million more to maintain and expand the system, including nearly $30 million in 2025 for a product called ImmigrationOS, according to Wired. Palantir did not respond to requests for comment. A 2016 Department of Homeland Security privacy assessment describes a feature the plaintiffs consider central: ICM automatically shares subject records with TECS, Customs and Border Protection’s traveler-screening system, where they can function as lookout records at the border. A file one agent opens in one state, in other words, can follow a person to a checkpoint. “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, a Protect Democracy attorney representing the plaintiffs, told Wired. The Department of Homeland Security called the claim “meritless” and said the lawsuit “is based on the lie that there is a database of ‘domestic terrorists’ run by DHS.” Its motion to dismiss describes the incidents as isolated and prohibited by department policy, arguing that J.C. created records for people he believed posed a safety threat and that the conduct was not “unconstitutional retaliation.” Todd Lyons, a former acting ICE director, told Representative Maxwell Frost in a letter that ICE does not maintain a database of U.S. citizens protesting its activity. The letter also acknowledged that ICE may collect information about people believed to be involved in potential federal-law violations or to pose officer-safety concerns, and that such information becomes an official government record once collected. The suit also alleges that agents drove past protesters’ and observers’ homes to intimidate them. It lands amid a period of escalation in immigration enforcement: ICE agents shot and killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old father, in Maine in July, part of a broader surge that has brought protests and litigation in several states. The plaintiffs are asking the court to order Ms. Williams’s records archived, bar DHS from using the collected information against them and prohibit Maine agents from threatening observers with watchlists or following them home. The case, filed in state court in Maine and placed under seal in September before a redacted version was released Friday, is pending; no resolution has been reached. ## Sources - [ICE Put Protester Photos Into Palantir’s Surveillance Database](https://gadgetreview.com/ice-put-protester-photos-into-palantirs-surveillance-database) — gadgetreview.com - [ICE Is Reportedly Putting ICE Observers, Protesters in a Palantir Database](https://gizmodo.com/ice-reportedly-is-putting-ice-observers-in-a-palantir-database-2000821153) — gizmodo.com