Balgarianovinite.com
Technology and data analytics companies tied to Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations have sharply increased their federal lobbying as the Trump administration has accelerated deportations and steered millions in contracts their way.
Palantir Technologies, Axon Enterprise and Parsons Corporation – three firms that received millions in ICE contracts in 2025 – boosted their combined lobbying spending by 194% from 2020 to 2025, rising from about $3.7 million to more than $10.8 million, according to an OpenSecrets analysis of federal lobbying disclosure filings.
Palantir’s lobbying spending rose from $2.4 million in 2020 to nearly $6.1 million in 2025, while Axon’s climbed from $480,000 to $2.5 million – including a 68% year-over-year increase in 2025. Both companies focused much of their lobbying on issues related to government technology, law enforcement and homeland security – the same areas where the companies hold ICE contracts.
Parsons also sharply increased its federal lobbying spending from $780,000 in 2020 to $2.3 million in 2025 (with last year’s total more than double its 2024 spending), including lobbying on issues related to border security.
The same companies have also secured millions in ICE contracts. In 2025, Palantir held roughly $145 million in ICE contract obligations, while Axon held about $31.9 million and Parsons more than $25.5 million, according to an OpenSecrets analysis of federal contracting data. These figures reflect the cumulative amount of federal funds the government has committed across all active awards.
Palantir and Parsons have hired two of the lobbying firms most closely tied to the Trump administration. Last year, Parsons paid $420,000 to Ballard Partners, which has become the most lucrative firm during the second Trump administration. Founder Brian Ballard served as chairman of the Trump Victory PAC in 2016 and 2017, and the firm previously employed White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and former Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Palantir also hired Ballard Partners, paying the firm $660,000 in 2025. In addition, it hired Miller Strategies, led by Jeff Miller, who served as a finance chair on President Donald Trump’s second inaugural committee. It paid his firm $690,000, according to OpenSecrets data. Both firms have seen their revenues skyrocket since Trump returned to office in January 2025.
Lobbying and political ties raise influence concerns
Palantir’s lobbying surge comes amid growing financial ties between its executives and Trump’s political network:
- Peter Thiel, one of the co-founders of Palantir Technologies, served on Trump’s transition team following the 2016 election and contributed $1 million to Make America Number One, a super PAC that backed Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. He also donated $8,100 in total to Trump’s campaign committees – $2,700 during his first presidential campaign and $5,400 in 2018.
- Individuals associated with Palantir gave $1 million to each of two Trump-affiliated super PACs in 2024: Make America Great Again Inc. and MAGA Inc.
- Palantir CEO Alexander Karp contributed $1 million to MAGA Inc. in December 2024 and another $1 million to Trump’s inauguration committee.
- Palantir was among nearly 40 private companies identified as donors to Trump’s White House ballroom project, though it did not disclose the amount of its contribution. Company representatives were also among roughly 130 attendees invited to a White House dinner for ballroom project supporters.
- A Project on Government Oversight investigation reported that Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff and a key architect of the administration’s immigration policies, disclosed in a mid-March 2025 financial filing that he held between $100,001 and $250,000 in Palantir stock. He sold the shares on Aug. 14, 2025, in accordance with federal ethics rules, according to a periodic transaction report filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.
Matthew Guariglia, a senior policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said those relationships can reinforce a cycle in which companies invest in data and surveillance technologies used in immigration enforcement and then profit as enforcement policies expand.
“We are seeing a vicious cycle in which government contracts make a tremendous amount of money for companies, and then those companies and their CEOs then pour resources back into a type of politics that would necessitate more money going to their company,” Guariglia said.
In recent years, Palantir has lobbied on issues including border security, software procurement and government data systems – areas that overlap with the technologies it provides to ICE. The company paid lobbying firm Invariant LLC $360,000 in the first half of 2024 to lobby on issues including “how commercial technology can improve border security,” according to federal disclosures, and another $50,000 to Cornerstone Government Affairs LLC in the fourth quarter of 2025 to lobby on topics such as “the introduction and education on ongoing work related to homeland security.”
While Palantir was lobbying on border security and government data systems, ICE added nearly $30 million to a multiyear contract with the company in April 2025, bringing the total to $145 million in obligations. Palantir is being paid to operate and upgrade ICE’s Investigative Case Management system, the platform agents use to track, store and manage immigration enforcement cases. The latest $30 million addition calls on Palantir to develop ImmigrationOS, a new AI system designed to help the agency track self-deportations and prioritize who should be deported.
Parsons Corporation followed a similar trajectory, increasing its lobbying on homeland security issues while holding millions of dollars in ICE contract obligations. The company, which had not lobbied on those issues since 2007, reported $1.3 million in lobbying on issues that included border security in 2025, according to OpenSecrets data.
That lobbying coincided with Parsons securing a $3.6 million Department of Homeland Security contract for “border wall construction program management support services,” spanning Dec. 22, 2025, to March 17, 2026, according to federal contracting data. Parsons had been positioning itself for border security work involving surveillance technology and data systems designed to detect, track and classify border crossings, stating in company materials that “current technology … fails to meet the operational need” to secure the border and that its own tools can “eliminate current operational gaps.”
In 2025, Parsons was the recipient of more than $25.5 million in contracts obligated by ICE. Most of those obligations reflect a COVID-19 biosurveillance contract first awarded in 2021, though some of the more recent awards included contracts to provide ICE’s Biometric Identification Transnational Migration Alert Program with mobile biometric collection devices and software. Those tools allow agents and foreign partners to collect fingerprints and other identifying data in the field and match that information against U.S. government databases, helping ICE identify individuals, link them to prior records and support enforcement operations across borders.
Similarly, Axon Enterprise – known for developing body-worn cameras and less-lethal technologies like tasers – has lobbied on many of the same law enforcement technologies it supplies to ICE. In 2025 alone, four of the company’s lobbying disclosure reports referenced body-worn cameras, while six cited less-lethal technologies, including one that specifically mentioned taser legislative policy.
Those same technologies account for the bulk of Axon’s ICE contracts. Axon was the recipient of more than $31.8 million in ICE contract obligations in 2025, including about $13.1 million awarded that year, largely for body-worn camera systems and taser equipment.
Surveillance tools at center of lobbying push
Some people who follow immigration enforcement warn that the same technologies these companies have lobbied on – including biometric tools and body-worn cameras – are now expanding ICE’s ability to track and monitor individuals, raising concerns about how that data is collected and used.
César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, a law professor who studies immigration enforcement, said tools like the Investigative Case Management platform that Palantir maintains for ICE do more than just compile data – they shape how that information is used in real time. By organizing vast amounts of data into a single, accessible system, he said, the technology helps turn information into immediate enforcement decisions in the field.
“Palantir takes vast quantities of information and makes it user-friendly in a very mobile way so that field officers have access to it,” García Hernández said. “The people in the field are the ones who have to decide who they go after, who they question and who they potentially detain – and they have to make those decisions very quickly.”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit defending digital privacy, has also raised concerns that ICE could use Axon’s cameras as a surveillance tool, noting that body-worn cameras – which are frequently cited in the company’s lobbying disclosures – are often framed as a tool for police accountability but can potentially generate vast amounts of footage that can be stored, analyzed and used in combination with other surveillance technologies.
Body 4 cameras, Axon’s newest body-worn camera model, can already livestream footage to real-time crime centers, where it can be combined with other surveillance systems – including doorbell cameras and license plate readers – to track incidents as they unfold, according to the conservative think tank R Street Institute.
Although Axon paused development of facial recognition for body-worn cameras in 2019 over concerns about bias and accuracy, the company announced in December 2025 that it is testing the technology again in a limited pilot program with the Edmonton Police Service in Alberta, Canada.
Amid surveillance and digital privacy concerns, some states have moved to limit those capabilities in recent years. New Hampshire banned the use of facial recognition on body-camera footage in 2016, while Vermont passed a law in 2020 restricting law enforcement use of facial recognition without legislative approval.
But federal guardrails remain limited, and some experts say efforts to regulate these technologies face challenges as the companies that develop them continue to secure federal contracts and invest heavily in lobbying.
“All these companies are increasing their lobbying because they know that now is the time they can really cash in on a government that is just throwing money at companies that make surveillance,” Guariglia said.
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