Over the past decade, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (Ice) has amassed millions of data points that it uses to identify and track its targets – from social media posts to location history and, most recently, tax information.
And there’s been one, multibillion-dollar tech company particularly instrumental in enabling Ice to put all that data to work: Palantir, the data analytics firm co-founded by Peter Thiel, the rightwing mega-donor and tech investor.
For years, little was known about how Ice uses Palantir’s technology. The company has consistently described itself as a “data processor” and says it does not play an active role in any of its customers’ data collection efforts or what clients do with that information.
Now, a cache of internal Ice documents – including hundreds of pages of emails between Ice and Palantir, as well as training manuals, and reports on the use of Palantir products – offer some of the first real-world examples of how Ice has used Palantir in its investigations and during on-the-ground enforcement operations.
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Categories: USA
in-sights.ca 
This just in…
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Bondi outlaws the rules for DOJ lawyers
Noem gets fired but elevated… sideways
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In International Politics it pays to know who your best friend is. Russia claims the WSJ is lying about helping Iran?
Who to believe!
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/wsj-doubles-down-report-russia-120247527.html
Russia has been sharing satellite intelligence and advanced drone technology with Iran to aid its targeting of U.S. and allied military assets in the Middle East, according to an exclusive report in the Wall Street Journal, a claim the Kremlin swiftly dismissed as “fake news.”
The allegations, published by the WSJ on Wednesday, describe an expanding military and intelligence relationship between Moscow and Tehran amid the ongoing conflict between Iran and the U.S.
Citing people familiar with the matter, the report says Russia has been providing Iran with satellite imagery and technological improvements for the Iranian-designed Shahed drones that both countries have deployed in recent conflicts. The technology reportedly includes components designed to improve drone communication, navigation, and targeting.
Russia has also shared battlefield experience from its war in Ukraine, offering guidance on drone tactics such as how many drones to deploy in coordinated strikes and at what altitudes they should fly, according to the report.
The assistance is intended to help Iran counter U.S. and Israeli military power while prolonging a conflict that has strategic and economic benefits for Moscow, the WSJ reported.
The intelligence sharing reportedly includes the locations of U.S. military forces and allied assets across the Middle East. Two sources told the newspaper that Moscow has recently provided
Tehran with satellite imagery directly from a fleet of military reconnaissance satellites operated by the Russian Aerospace Forces.
Such data could give Iranian forces detailed insight into troop movements and military infrastructure, improving their ability to select targets and assess damage after attacks.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the Wall Street Journal’s report as “fake news” on Wednesday in a comment to Reuters.
The WSJ report comes days after U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff addressed initial reports in The Washington Post that Russia had shared intelligence with Tehran.
During a CNBC interview on March 10, Witkoff appeared content with Russian officials’ denial of the allegations in a call with U.S. negotiators.
“We can take them at their word,” he said, adding that Jared Kushner had heard the same assurances on a similar call, before warning: “But let’s hope that they’re not sharing.”
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Soliciting bribes?
If it’s called a “Success Fee” is that OK? Is that how things work these days?
https://crooksandliars.com/2026/03/dhs-contractors-just-dropped-bomb-white
Previously, $25 million was the trigger for the DHS secretary’s approval, a former ICE official in the Biden administration said.
Jessica Tillipman, the associate dean for government procurement law studies at George Washington University, told NBC News that in general, if a special government employee had control over which companies got contracts and sought payment from companies in exchange for winning contracts, that would “raise bright red flags of illegality.”
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Federal law states it is illegal for any public official, “or person who has been selected to be a public official,” to “corruptly” demand, seek, receive, accept or agree to receive or accept “anything of value personally or for any other person or entity in return for being influenced in the performance of any official act.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/dhs-contractors-told-white-house-officials-asked-pay-corey-lewandowski-rcna263744
More than a year ago, The GEO Group founder George Zoley asked for a meeting with Corey Lewandowski, a close ally of President Donald Trump who had just started a powerful position as a top adviser to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
As a titan of the private prison industry, GEO Group stood to benefit from Trump’s mass deportation agenda, which would require the federal government to spend tens of billions of dollars to transport, detain, monitor and deport undocumented immigrants. The company’s federal contracts in those areas already totaled more than $1 billion per year.
But Zoley and his advisers were worried that the road to securing new government contracts now ran through Lewandowski. The two had history: Lewandowski and Zoley had butted heads during the transition between Trump’s November 2024 election and his January 2025 inauguration, before Lewandowski officially worked for the government, according to two industry sources and one senior DHS official familiar with the matter.
During the transition, Lewandowski told Zoley that he wanted to be paid in exchange for protecting and growing GEO Group’s DHS contracts, according to a senior DHS official and three people familiar with their discussion. Zoley, concerned about the propriety of the ask, told Lewandowski he would have no part of it, the sources said, describing the confrontation as tense.
Lewandowski took a role as an unpaid “special government employee” at DHS once the new administration was sworn in, where he advised and acted as a “de facto chief of staff” to Noem and, sources said, influenced contract awards. Zoley scrambled to find a way to assuage tensions from the meeting during the transition, two industry sources familiar with the matter said. He secured a follow-up with Lewandowski in late February or early March 2025.
That second meeting did not go much better.
Zoley offered to put Lewandowski on retainer — a recurring consulting fee — with GEO Group, according to two industry sources familiar with the matter.
Lewandowski balked, saying he wanted to be compensated based on the company’s new or renewed contracts with DHS, the two sources said.
“He wanted payments — what some people would call a success fee,” said a person with knowledge of the meeting.
Zoley declined, the two sources said. In the months that followed, the length of two of GEO Group’s federal contracts shrank, and currently several of its facilities that could house migrants sit idle, even as Congress and Trump have poured money into DHS to execute the mass deportation campaign. GEO Group officials believe that is tied to their not agreeing to Lewandowski’s solicitations, said a source familiar with the GEO Group officials’ thinking.
A senior DHS official told NBC News that within weeks of Lewandowski’s second meeting with Zoley, Lewandowski told him not to award more contracts to GEO Group. Lewandowski, through a spokesperson, denied that. Months later, in December 2025, GEO Group did receive a new contract for $121 million for services that help locate immigrants DHS is trying to find.
Lewandowski‘s spokesperson denied this account of his interactions with GEO Group. “This is absolutely false and did not happen — Mr. Lewandowski never demanded any payment or compensation from the Geo Group, at any time,” his representative said.
Asked whether he has ever received “any money from any of the contracts” he has signed off on, Lewandowski previously told NBC News in an interview, “zero, not one penny.”
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The Trump admin only recruits The Best People. If a trusted official says something happened it must have happened.
On his first media go round Mr, Phillips claimed that in 3 million non-Americans voted illegally. Then he was rewarded.
https://crooksandliars.com/2025/12/true-vote-grifter-named-new-head-fema
The name Gregg Phillips may not ring any bells, but it’s possible you’re familiar with his past work. Maybe you’ve heard of “2000 Mules,” a 2022 documentary by far right conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza based on completely unfounded claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election drummed up by True the Vote, an election denier nonprofit where Phillips has long served in leadership.
(The widely debunked film featured the late Charlie Kirk.) Or maybe you remember when Trump tweeted in 2016 with zero evidence that “millions” of people voted illegally in that year’s presidential election? That was based solely on a previous tweet from Phillips, which was also based on no evidence.
Phillips’ impact on the lives of Americans is about to significantly grow, The Handbasket is the first to report per multiple sources, with his new job as Administrator of FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery (ORR). Despite having zero experience in disaster response, Phillips has publicly shown a keen interest in the inner-workings of his new agency and natural disasters, despite never having professionally worked in these spaces.
He’s posted on LinkedIn that his “work in disasters and emergencies goes back four decades” and refers to himself as “a very vocal opponent of FEMA.” On his Wikipedia page you’ll find an entire section labeled “Allegations of grift, ethical misconduct, philandering, nepotism and cronyism.” Despite it all, he’s about to take on one of those most important roles in federal disaster management.
Phillips continued his tirade: “Doing what he [Biden] did to us, for doing what he did to you, for doing what he did to this entire movement. I would just like to find him and punch him in the mouth. I don’t care. I’m sure they’d put me in jail. I’m sure they’d put me in jail again. Whatever. This guy is the most horrible of all human beings. He is a nasty, shitty, crappy human being, and he deserves to die. And I hope he does. I’ll deal with the God in that later.”
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https://crooksandliars.com/2026/03/fema-official-claims-he-was-teleported
FEMA Official Claims He Was Teleported To Waffle House
As millions of Americans braced for a series of brutal storms this winter, the senior official in charge of the federal government’s disaster response had been on the job only a few weeks — and had previously claimed on podcasts that he once teleported to a Waffle House.
Gregg Phillips, appointed in December to lead FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery, rose to prominence not through his time as a federal emergency management professional but as a far-right activist who spread conspiracy theories about voter fraud and frequently used violent rhetoric toward political opponents.
Most notably, Phillips on multiple podcasts made bizarre claims to have been involuntarily teleported, including once to a Georgia Waffle House 50 miles away.
“Teleporting is no fun,” Phillips said on one podcast last year. “It was real.”
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/far-fema-official-charge-disaster-184717080.html
Notably, two of the top Trump staffers who vouched for Phillips’ appointment have been pushed out of the agency. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, who touted his “experience in emergency and humanitarian response, state government operations and large-scale program reform,” left the administration in February amid increasing backlash to the agency’s anti-immigration operations.
Meanwhile, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem is being ousted from her role at the end of the month. Trump was reportedly unhappy with her recent testimony before the Senate and House Judiciary Committees about DHS and ICE’s aggressive immigration enforcement actions, including the fatal shootings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota.
The president selected Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma as her replacement, who is awaiting a confirmation vote in the Senate in the coming days. If confirmed, he is expected to step in for Noem on March 31.
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In Senate testimony Mr. Mullin stated that duelling was still “going on” in America “between consenting adults.”
Taken by surprise Senator Rand Paul declared that duelling has been illegal for 170 years.
The Trump admin only recruits and hires The Best People
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