The US authorities are using automated artificial intelligence (AI)-powered surveillance tools made by Palantir and Babel Street to deliberately target non-US citizens and pose risks to those who speak out for Palestinian rights, said Amnesty International, amid the country’s ongoing unlawful clampdown on migrants, refugees and asylum seekers.
Amnesty International reviewed documentation from the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) public records, and previously disclosed procurement and privacy assessment documents, showing that AI tools Babel X, provided by Babel Street, and Palantir’s Immigration OS, have automated capabilities that enable constant mass monitoring, surveillance, and assessments of people, often for the purpose of targeting non-US citizens. The research also exposes how these tools are being used by the US government to track migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, and ultimately carry a high risk of being used as part of the “Catch and Revoke” initiative.
“It is deeply concerning that the US government is deploying invasive AI-powered technologies within a context of a mass deportation agenda and crackdown on pro-Palestine expression, leading to a host of human rights violations. These technologies enable authorities to swiftly track and target international students and other marginalized migrant groups at an unprecedented scale and scope. This has led to a pattern of unlawful detentions and mass deportations, creating a climate of fear and exacerbating the ‘chilling effect’ for migrant communities and for international students across schools and campuses,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy and Campaigns at Amnesty International.
The State Department’s repressive AI-driven “Catch and Revoke” initiative combines social media monitoring, visa status tracking, and automated threat assessments of foreign individuals on visas, including international students. The AI tools supplied by Babel Street and Palantir, play a key role in US authorities’ ability to identify people, as well as their behaviour and movements, more quickly and on a large scale to determine if their visas should be revoked.
Babel X conducts sentiment analysis by assigning a sentiment and likely intent to posts shared by individuals based on online behaviour, while both Babel X and ImmigrationOS can conduct pattern recognition and automate data analysis using algorithms. The tools also aggregate data from various public and private sources, including multiple government databases.
Babel X, for instance, is allegedly used for AI-powered scanning of social media platforms for flagging “terrorism” related content. This information can be used by US authorities to make a decision about revoking an individual’s visa. If the State Department determines a visa to be revoked, ICE agents are dispatched from local field offices to arrest and deport the individual. Probabilistic technologies that are used to draw inferences about individuals’ intent have massive margins for error, and can often be discriminatory and biased, and could lead to falsely framing pro-Palestine content as antisemitic.
The human rights risks of such systems are well-known and longstanding. During the first Trump administration, 55 human rights groups (including Amnesty International), as well as 54 technology experts, wrote to the authorities to oppose the introduction of a similar automated “extreme vetting” system, on the grounds that it would be ineffective and invariably lead to violations of the right to non-discrimination, expression and other human rights of migrants in the USA.
“The coercive ‘Catch and Revoke’ initiative, facilitated by AI technologies risks supercharging arbitrary and unlawful visa revocations, detentions, deportations and violations of a slew of human rights. These include the rights to privacy, freedom of expression and access to information, freedoms of movement equality and non-discrimination, and the right to liberty and protest,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas.
Amnesty International analysed procurement documents, contracts, and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) responses to previous requests by other organizations, related to all publicly known AI projects currently deployed by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Custom and Borders Protection (CBP), and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). According to the CBP website, ICE and CBP currently host at least 80 AI projects.
Babel X by Babel Street
According to the documents reviewed, Babel X has been used by the CBP since at least 2019. The technology can gather sweeping amounts of data from a single identifier, such as a person’s name, email, or phone number. It can also access social media posts, IP addresses, employment history, and unique IDs generated for mobile app advertising that can be used to trace device location. Babel X enables vast monitoring of various groups including US and non-US citizens, and permanent residents, but has been tasked specifically with monitoring refugees and asylum seekers, as disclosed in the CBP’s own Privacy Threshold Analysis for Babel X.
Babel X is currently listed under CBP’s active AI projects page as “a commercially procured tool that helps CBP compile social media and open-source information on travellers who may be subject to further screening for potential violation of laws that CBP is authorized to enforce or administer.”
In February 2025, the Senior Vice President of Risk at Babel Street posted an article promoting the use of AI-enabled OSINT to counter and find “terrorist related content” for interception and border security, and to find “radicalized groups” and individuals using keyword searches across large databases of both documents, news articles, and online media. Babel Street uses “persistent search” to continuously monitor any new information appearing online pertaining to an individual, or in other governmental databases, even after an initial search query has been done. Through automating both the flagging and the scraping of massive amounts of data, persistently, on flagged individuals, Babel X risks rendering individuals suspicious by default, and subjecting them to the risk of visa revocation, detention and deportation.
Immigration OS by Palantir
In April 2025, ICE awarded Palantir a $30M contract to track “self-deportations” and identify priority deportation cases, particularly visa overstays. The same month, 404 Media reported a leaked Slack (internal) message sent by Palantir’s Chief Technology Officer: “over the last few weeks we prototyped a new set of data integrations and workflows with ICE” and added: “The new administration’s focus on leveraging data to drive enforcement operations has accelerated those efforts”.
The system, referred to as Immigration Lifecycle Operating System (Immigration OS), serves as an upgrade to Palantir’s Integrated Case Management system (ICM), already used by ICE since 2014.
ICM allows ICE personnel to “create an electronic case file that organizes and links all records and documents associated with a particular [immigration-related] investigation, so they are easily accessible from a single location. It also enables personnel to link records to multiple investigations in order to draw connections between cases and enables access to a vast range of personal data from US agencies and law enforcement.
The new version of the Immigration OS has the following features:
· Streamlining the selection and apprehension of individuals based on ICE priorities, focusing on transnational criminal organizations, violent criminals, and visa overstays.
· Real-time monitoring of self-deportation and integration with prioritization systems to inform policy and resource allocation.
· End-to-end immigration management, from identification to removal, focusing on deportation efficiency.
Chiefly, Immigration OS automates an already deeply flawed and unaccountable process that has a history of disregarding due process and human rights, further obscuring and reinforcing it.
During the first Trump administration, in 2020, Amnesty International wrote to Palantir about its human rights due diligence processes. In response, Palantir acknowledged that it had “[…] purposefully declined to take on contracts with [ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations] and CBP under the current [then] Administration because we share your organization’s concern with the potential serious human rights violations against migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers at the US – Mexico border and risks of disproportionate immigration enforcement inside the USA”
An All-Seeing State and the Chilling Effect on International Student Protestors
On 8 March 2025, the US government unlawfully detained Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student who served as a spokesperson for campus protesters and is a permanent US resident. President Trump declared it was “the first arrest of many to come.” Soon after, nine foreign students who participated in protests or spoke out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza had their visas or residency status revoked. Mahmoud Khalil was released on 20 June from ICE’s custody.
In another documented case, a Turkish PhD student from Tufts Univeristy, Rumeysa Ozturk, was intercepted near her home by six plain-clothes immigration officers and placed in an unmarked car. The agents refused to identify themselves until after she was detained. Her only apparent offence was co-writing an opinion piece criticizing her school’s lack of response to student demands regarding Gaza. A DHS spokesperson later claimed she “engaged in activities in support of Hamas” without providing any evidence.
While the US government has discretion to deny and revoke visas to applicants, they may not do so in ways that violate rights protected by the US Constitution and international human rights law, including rights to free speech and due process.
The current administration’s repressive tactics and summary revocation of people’s immigration status demonstrate a complete disregard for the human rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. It represents an overt violation of the right to equality and non-discrimination, with visa-holders, and asylees explicitly targeted by the AI-driven systems.
On 10 July 2025, Amnesty International contacted Palantir Technologies and Babel Street for their comments on our findings. Babel Street did not respond. Palantir Technologies responded on 24 July 2025, stating that their product was not used to power the administration’s “Catch & Revoke” effort, which is a State Department initiative and clarified that Palantir was contracted with the Department of Homeland Security’s US Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE), and that it did not specifically target student protestors, nor are their products powering rights violating immigration enforcements. Palantir confirmed that the recent expansion of ICM (dubbed “Immigration OS”) ‘[…] does include work that directly serves [Enforcement and Removal Operation]’s mission’ and confirmed that this included the following capabilities ‘(a) Enforcement Operations Prioritization and Targeting, (b) Self- Deportation Tracking and (c) Immigration Lifecycle Operations.’.
While Babel Street and Palantir’s contracts are with CBP and ICE, respectively, ICE’s Enforcement Removal Operations (ERO) manages all aspects of immigration enforcement processes, including ‘the identification, arrest, detention and removal of aliens.’ ICE is the operational arm tasked with implementing the decisions made by all US agencies concerned with migration management, including the State Department. In other words, ICE plays a key role in enforcing the “Catch and Revoke” policy by way of aggressive tracking and detention tactics, even if the policy as a whole is being implemented by the State Department. These responses do not fundamentally address the concerns raised by this research – that Palantir and Babel Street’s technologies risk contributing to human rights violations against migrants as a result of their contracts with federal immigration enforcement agencies.
“Systems like Babel X and Immigration OS play a key role in the US administration’s ability to carry out its repressive tactics, facilitating rapid automated decisions that have led to mass deportations carried out with unprecedented speed, which does not allow for adequate due process and poses significant risks to the human rights of all immigrants, including students who are non-US citizens,” said Erika Guevara Rosas.
Given Palantir and Babel Street’s prior relationship with the US government and the Trump administration’s public intention to engage in mass deportations, these companies could have reasonably foreseen the risk of harm being seen across the country and reconsidered entering into these contracts, to address these risks in line with international human rights standards.
Had Palantir and Babel Street adequately carried out human rights due diligence and fulfilled their human rights responsibilities in 2025, these companies could and should have similarly declined to engage in these mass deportation efforts. By providing this technology without adequate safeguards, companies such as Babel Street and Palantir risk contributing to the human rights violations surrounding these efforts.
Amnesty International recognizes the importance of exercising leverage where possible in any business relationship where human rights are implicated. It is of utmost importance that companies not cause, contribute, or be directly linked to human rights violations
“The use of this technology in this context risks fueling the Trump administration’s capacity to make arbitrary decisions to deport marginalized people on a whim and in massive numbers with limited to no access to due process. We must not forget that these systems are now in the hands of an administration that has already disappeared people to a cruel prison in El Salvador based upon a presumption that they may commit crimes in the future,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas.
“Additionally, the precarity of visas, especially for marginalized groups like some international students, cannot be dismissed. Palantir and Babel Street should conduct and publish the full findings of human rights due diligence processes . Unless Palantir and Babel Street can demonstrate they can use their leverage as suppliers to improve the serious human rights consequences borne by the policies of their clients, these companies should immediately cease their work with the US administration related to immigration enforcement.”
Amnesty International is also calling on U.S. Congress to take steps to strengthen its oversight and regulatory mechanisms to ensure that these tech companies are not contributing to human rights violations.
Background
On 27 March, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced he had revoked the visas of at least 300 students and visitors since January.
More recent reporting indicates that at least 1,800 and as many as 4,000 students had their visas revoked. Many of the impacted students claim they never engaged in protests and were never provided notice of the revocation, though some may have had some interaction with law enforcement during their stays, for even minor reasons such as a traffic ticket. According to a lawsuit filed on behalf of two students in California, students were targeted because they were from African, Arab, Asian, Middle Eastern, and Muslim backgrounds.
Amnesty International has previously documented ICE usage of Palantir’s ICM to execute harmful policies targeting migrants and asylum seekers, and highlighted the high risk that Palantir has contributed to human rights abuses through the ways the company’s technology has historically facilitated ICE operations.
