Over 1,200 students from more than 17 colleges, including Yale, Stanford, Harvard, and the University of California-Berkley, are pledging not to work for software company Palantir over its contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Palantir has come under recent criticism for providing data-mining software for ICE’s Investigative Case Management system, which is used in workplace raids and deportations. Palantir, who has worked with ICE since 2014, has an estimated $51 million contract with the immigration enforcement agency.
The advocacy campaign, called No Tech For ICE, is specifically targeting Palantir’s recruitment efforts on university and college campuses. “Without these corporate partnerships, Palantir’s recruitment efforts and future growth would stall,” the campaign said in a statement.
Earlier this month, Palantir’s CEO, Alex Karp, authored an op-ed defending the company’s position, stating, “[i]mmigration policy is not a software challenge; it’s a political one. . .[t]he solution lies with our political and judiciary system, not with Silicon Valley’s C-suite.”
Palantir, along with Microsoft, Amazon, Dell, and others, have faced criticism in recent months as part of a growing effort to call out companies for doing business with immigration enforcement agencies.