DOGE is building a master database for immigration enforcement, sources say

Staffers from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency are building a master database to speed-up immigration enforcement and deportations by combining sensitive data from across the federal government, multiple sources familiar with the plans tell CNN.

The goal is to create a massive repository of data pulled from various agencies, according to sources familiar with the project who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they aren’t authorized to talk about it. The administration has previously sought to centralize information from a number of agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration and Health and Human Services, among others.

Palantir, a Silicon Valley data-analytics company co-founded by a Musk ally that has been used by immigration officials before for criminal investigations, is involved in building out the database. The company has long been ingesting and processing data from multiple ICE and DHS sources. The latest endeavor, however, is expected to go further by identifying people with civil immigration violations.

Palantir is already a well-known government contractor, including at the IRS, so it would be a “logical choice” for the DOGE teams to utilize it, a senior IRS official said, adding that, “it would be easy to change the scope of existing contracts and pay Palantir to do this stuff.”

“They’re going to take the information we already have and put it into a system,” a Trump administration official told CNN about DOGE’s plans. “It will be able to rapidly queue information. Everyone is converting to Palantir.”

The DHS contract with Palantir includes “streamlining selection and apprehension operations of illegal aliens,” and self-deportation tracking, according to public records on a federal contracting site. ICE currently uses Palantir’s software for Homeland Security investigations.

A big dataset would help immigration officials more quickly identify who is undocumented in the US and potentially eligible for deportation. So far, a challenge for officials has been building what they call “targeting lists” to arrest people without status. Some existing lists, sources say, have been riddled with errors, creating additional work for agents in the field to verify and vet information.

But former Homeland Security officials have expressed concern over Palantir’s capability to serve ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations because those operations also require an enormous amount of logistics planning. While Palantir has been useful for specific data sets, one former Homeland Security official argued it’s largely viewed as a “general purpose tool.”