The Center for Immigration Studies Executive Director, Mark Krikorian, interviewed the Director of USCIS, Jospeh Edlow. Watch the video of the conversation here. Topics covered include: asylum abuse, new screening and vetting measures, Temporary Protected Status (TPS), chain migration, and fraud.
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The Mayors Migration Council has issued a report “Cities Leading Regular Migration Pathways in the Americas” which highlights roles that cities (throughout the western hemisphere) are playing in migration today. This report highlights some examples where cities are strengthening the entire community by improving the migrant experiece and promoting migration governance.
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The National Immigration Project joined the UCLA Center for Immigration Law and Policy to launch Mapping Deportations, a website and organizing tool that traces deportation orders since the federal government began collecting this data.
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This article says that international student enrollment in universities in the United States is down 19% this year to 313,000 for their freshman year.
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The International Refugee Assistance Project has published this Explainer on the Travel Ban which :
Prohibits the entry of immigrants and nonimmigrants into the U.S. from these 12 countries:
● Afghanistan
● Burma
● Chad
● Republic of the Congo
● Equatorial Guinea
● Eritrea
● Haiti
● Iran
● Libya
● Somalia
● Sudan
● YemenProhibits entry of immigrants and some nonimmigrants from these 7 countries:
● Burundi
● Cuba
● Laos
● Sierra Leone
● Togo
● Turkmenistan
● Venezuela
For these seven countries, the ban also directs consular officers to reduce the validity of
non-immigrant visas to the extent permitted by law. -
The American Immigration Council posted a summary of a new BIA (Board of Immigration Appeals) decision which requires people who crossed the border unlawfuly to be subject to mandatory detention and ineligible or bond release. Read their explanation here.
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Today, we are sharing ICE records on Palantir that show how the company has long been enmeshed in the day-to-day operations fueling ICE surveillance and deportations. These records were obtained via a FOIA lawsuit filed in 2019. The documents include emails, training guides and progress reports between Palantir and ICE spanning 2014-2022.The records show how Palantir has been deeply entrenched in ICE’s data surveillance system for more than a decade — for example, helping the agency map cell phone location data, query “person crossing” data, comb through millions of data points about student visas, import data from phone hacking company Cellebrite, and more.
See today’s coverage in The Guardian here.
We have highlighted some key links below. We hope these documents can be helpful in your work to resist ICE, including the central role of corporations like Palantir.
Key FOIA Links and Takeaways:
The FOIA documents suggest ICE used Palantir platforms and technologies to:Access Cellebrite data (Cellebrite devices are used by law enforcement to quickly unlock and extract data from seized cell phones, laptops and other devices).
(Link, pp. 12-19)Map GPS cell phone geolocation data, or “when and where an event ‘ping’ occurred.” (Link, pp. 28-38 — see screenshot below)Access nearly 5 million records about non-immigrant students and their dependents via SEVIS (Student and Exchange Visitor Information System).
(Link, p. 25)Comb through an array of surveillance datasets such as Thomson Reuters CLEAR, local and state law enforcement data, court records, and more.
(Link, p. 41)Troubleshoot how to geocode IP addresses.
(Link, p. 16)Search “Person Crossing” data as well as international travel records (or APIS, Advance Passenger Information System).
(Link, pp. 12-15)Sort through datasets to identify targets, for example, by looking up names, birth dates, and FINS (Federal Identification Numbers) in Palantir systems that can then quickly extract data about those people from many other sources — e.g. a “bulk run.”
(Link, pp. 104-105)Palantir FALCON is a now-retired data analytics app that ICE used to generate intelligence reports and conduct mass raids. The FOIA documents include emails indicating that ICE officers using FALCON could access the app indefinitely — even if they had, for example, stopped working for the government.
(Link)Palantir materials suggest that Palantir staff embedded with ICE as agency data analysts and engineers.
(Link, p.8) Many groups have challenged Palantir’s previous statements that it does not work with ICE ERO (Enforcement and Removal Operations), the part of ICE explicitly tasked with deporting people. The FOIA documents suggest that during the first Trump administration, ERO staff were able to access Palantir technologies
(Link). Marking a shift in the company’s defensive stance if not in its work, today Palantir is unapologetic about its work to “support deportation logistics planning and execution.
“Link to contract related documents (note: contract amounts redacted by ICE)
.Link to FOIA DocumentsGPS cell phone location surveillance using Palantir technologies
(Link, p. 36).Read Coverage in The GuardianWhile Palantir has been “mission-critical” to ICE for over a decade, the federal government is now massively expanding its reliance on Palantir to power deportations and consolidate systems of state surveillance. Palantir was recently awarded a no-bid $30 million contract to build a new deportation surveillance system, ImmigrationOS, to enable ICE to use near real-time data to locate people to detain and deport — launching as soon as this month. We have filed new FOIA requests with ICE, DHS and DOGE requesting new information on the mass surveillance system Palantir is reportedly building for the Trump administration, including documents on the data-deportation platform ImmigrationOS.
Copies of JFL’s latest FOIA requests are available here.
In solidarity,
Just Futures Law -
A group of immigration judges, who almost never speak to the press, describes the dismantling of our immigration court system from the inside.
Listen to This American Life, with Ira Glass (art by Jane Rosenberg)
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Here is a September, 2025 conversation between Mark Krikorian, Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies and Border Patrol Chief Michael Banks about recent changes at the southern border.
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NBC News has published this article and video , Under Trump Administration, ICE scraps paperwork officers once had to do before immigration arrests. This signals a change in the background research that ICE agents had done in the past to conduct a raid and what is now being required.
Targeted arrests might be the result of specific, individual backgrounds and circumstances. They most often occur at someone’s home or work location (places where the detainee is expected to be in their daily lives).
Profiling might be necessary if ICE arrests are commonly made on the streets in non-specific locations.
If ICE paperwork is no longer necessary to make an arrest, they it may be more likely that profiling at street locations will become more common.
Immigration Insight 