As the government nears a potential reopening, millions of Americans face a continued freeze on SNAP payments while the Trump Administration intensifies funding for immigration enforcement efforts.
As millions of Americans grapple with the ongoing freeze on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) payments, the Trump Administration is simultaneously ramping up funding for its immigration enforcement initiatives. This development comes as the government appears poised to reopen after a prolonged shutdown.
Recent documentation reveals that the administration has allocated millions in new federal contracts to Palantir Technologies, a software company that plays a crucial role in the government’s efforts to target, detain, and deport immigrants. On September 19, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) exercised a $19 million option to expand its existing contract with Palantir, aimed at enhancing its Investigative Case Management System. Just a week later, ICE announced a supplemental agreement totaling $30 million to improve the prototype of its ImmigrationOS system, designed to better track and detain immigrants. The following day, ICE awarded Palantir an additional $2 million to further support its ongoing contract.
Despite the government shutdown, ICE is ensuring that its deportation operations continue unabated. While some of the software enhancements will assist ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Unit in combating drug and human trafficking, it is evident that the enhanced capabilities of ImmigrationOS and the Investigative Case Management System will also be used to target immigrants who are not involved in criminal activities, including those who voice dissent against government policies.
Austin Kocher, a geographer at Syracuse University and a leading expert in immigration enforcement trends, reported a significant increase in ICE arrests, rising from 12,000 per month in January 2025, at the end of the Biden administration, to 30,000 per month by September. Alarmingly, nearly half of those detained were non-criminals.
The non-criminal detainees include many individuals who are lawfully present in the U.S., such as backlogged applicants for U visas—designated for victims or witnesses of crimes who have assisted law enforcement—T visa applicants (victims of human trafficking), backlogged asylum seekers, and DACA recipients. There is currently no comprehensive record of how Palantir’s technology has been employed to target specific individuals, but reports indicate that ICE has utilized the software to monitor individual air travel, scan driver’s licenses, and access cell phone records, among other data points.
Among the vulnerable immigrant populations are those living and working legally in the U.S. under Temporary Protected Status (TPS). These individuals face precarious circumstances, as their legal status can be revoked at any time due to arbitrary decisions made by the government. For instance, in July, nearly 9,000 Afghans had their TPS status revoked after the Department of Homeland Security determined that conditions in Afghanistan had improved, despite reports indicating that over half of the country’s population requires food aid and that rights for women and minorities are deteriorating.
Many of these Afghan TPS recipients fled their home country in 2021 amid the U.S. withdrawal, having worked with U.S. and international agencies to promote democracy or served as translators during military operations against the Taliban.
By leveraging data from various sources and utilizing Palantir’s artificial intelligence technology, ICE can more effectively target and track these vulnerable groups, including Afghans, Haitians, Venezuelans, South Sudanese, and others who have been criminalized by sudden revocations of their legal status.
It remains uncertain what specific enhancements Palantir will implement with the new influx of federal funding, and what additional personal information—including Medicaid, SNAP, IRS, and Social Security Administration data—will become accessible to the Department of Homeland Security. However, it is likely that these developments will lead to an expansion of state and commercial databases that can be used to target and monitor individuals, regardless of their immigration status.
One concerning example is the Department of Labor’s recent attempt to access individual records from the federal-state unemployment insurance system. “This should be ringing alarm bells,” said Quinn Anex-Ries, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Democracy and Technology. He noted that this effort occurs against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s extensive initiatives to collect vast amounts of information about everyday Americans, often under the pretense of preventing fraud, waste, and abuse. However, as evidenced by past actions, this data has frequently been repurposed for surveillance and immigration enforcement.
The ultimate consequences of these initiatives to access confidential personal data, authorized by executive orders aimed at eliminating waste and protecting the American populace, remain uncertain. Many of these efforts have faced legal challenges, often being rebuffed by federal judges. Nevertheless, litigation continues, and the Supreme Court has generally supported assertions of executive authority.
As the Senate reaches a tentative agreement to reopen the government following the longest shutdown in U.S. history, the focus now shifts to the House of Representatives. Meanwhile, the Trump Administration persists in its campaign to freeze some or all SNAP payments while simultaneously increasing its investments in targeting immigrants.
Source: Original article