The Data Middleman: How Thomson Reuters Feeds ICE's Deportation Machine

What the Documents Show

Thomson Reuters, the global media and data conglomerate best known for Reuters News, operates a separate data brokerage business under the brand name CLEAR. According to documents obtained by 404 Media and published March 31, 2026, CLEAR's records — which can include names, addresses, Social Security numbers, car registrations, phone records, marital status, household members, and "details on someone's ethnicity" — are ingested directly into the immigration enforcement systems that Palantir builds and operates for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The link had long been suspected, but the new reporting by journalist Joseph Cox at 404 Media draws it with unprecedented specificity. An internal Palantir wiki obtained by 404 Media explained that Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), a division of ICE that has shifted from criminal to immigration enforcement under the Trump administration, used a Palantir-built system called FALCON. A former Palantir employee confirmed to 404 Media that Thomson Reuters' CLEAR data was used in that FALCON system.

From FALCON, ICE and Palantir moved to a newer tool. In January 2026, 404 Media revealed a system called ELITE — Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement — which populates a map with potential deportation targets, generates a dossier on each person, and assigns a "confidence score" on the person's current address. Internal ICE material listed one of the address sources as "CLEAR." Two Department of Homeland Security sources told 404 Media they believe the reference is to Thomson Reuters' CLEAR product.

The Data Chain: From CLEAR to Your Door

CLEAR is described in DHS procurement documents as "vital to the mission-essential, time sensitive investigative work of several DHS Components." The documents state: "Without this data, DHS would not be able to identify targets associated with criminal enterprise, terrorism, and immigration fraud as rapidly." Those documents list what CLEAR can provide: a person's name, address, date of birth, phone records, driver license, motor vehicle registrations, Social Security number, marital status, household information including other household members, and public social media details.

The Financial Times confirmed in December 2025 that CLEAR — described as holding "records on millions of Americans — including utility bills, vehicle registrations and credit report details" — was part of ICE's data infrastructure, potentially providing more current addresses than government databases alone.

CLEAR's data also appears in documentation for a third tool: Mobile Companion, an app made by Motorola that queries license plate scans. ICE sent a message to all Enforcement and Removal Operations staff — the unit focused specifically on deportations — about combining Motorola's license plate reader network with Thomson Reuters' data. Internal material sent to ICE staff stated that "Thomson Reuters CLEAR combines comprehensive public and proprietary data with nationwide license plate data from Motorola Solutions' secure shared data network."

The combined picture describes a layered surveillance stack: Thomson Reuters provides commercial data records, those records feed into Palantir's ELITE targeting platform, and that platform directs ICE agents to specific addresses and neighborhoods.

Palantir's Growing ICE Partnership

Palantir's relationship with ICE has expanded rapidly. In 2025, Wired reported that ICE awarded Palantir a $30 million no-bid contract to build ImmigrationOS, designed to give ICE "near real-time visibility" on people self-deporting and to track immigrants' movements across government databases. The Guardian reported in February 2026 that Palantir beat Wall Street earnings expectations, with its government contracts — including ICE work — driving growth.

An ICE official testified about using the ELITE tool before officials detained more than 30 people in an operation that lawyers described as a "dragnet," according to 404 Media. Fortune reported in January 2026 that ELITE ingests data from Medicaid and other government databases, generating dossiers and leads on people ICE considers potentially deportable.

In its own public statements, Palantir said it became "a more mature partner to ICE" when it started work on the new systems during Trump's mass deportation effort.

200+ Employees Push Back

The revelations have triggered significant internal dissent at Thomson Reuters. The Minnesota Star Tribune first reported that around 180 workers at the company's Eagan, Minnesota office — one of Thomson Reuters' largest U.S. locations, where many employees work on CLEAR — sent leadership a letter expressing concern about the company's supervision of its DHS and ICE contracts. The New York Times subsequently reported that more than 200 employees had signed the letter.

The letter, reported by the Minnesota Star Tribune in February 2026, demanded that Thomson Reuters confirm the status of its contracts — some due for renewal in the coming months — and explain what oversight it exercises over how DHS uses the company's tools. Employees cited Operation Metro Surge, a DHS operation focused on Minnesota in which officials killed Renée Good and Alex Pretti, as a triggering event. One employee quoted by the Minnesota Star Tribune said: "People are worried about the role their job has played in what has happened."

External shareholders have also raised concerns. Emma Pullman, head of shareholder engagement and responsible investment for the B.C. General Employees' Union — a minority Thomson Reuters shareholder — told 404 Media: "If these allegations are true, they cut directly against Thomson Reuters' claims that its products and services are limited to fighting serious crime and are not facilitating deportations."

Thomson Reuters' internal response, quoted by the Minnesota Star Tribune, came from Kevin Appold, the company's vice president for projects and U.S. public records: "We prohibit customers from using CLEAR to identify or locate undocumented immigrants who have not committed crimes." Thomson Reuters declined to comment to 404 Media for its March 31 story, saying the outlet's definition of "on background" differed from the company's and therefore it was "unable to address the misstatements we believe you may make in your story."

The Contract and What Comes Next

Thomson Reuters has held tens of millions of dollars in contracts with DHS and ICE over the past decade, including for CLEAR, according to a Minnesota Star Tribune analysis of federal data. The Baron reported that the staff letter specifically urged Thomson Reuters to drop a $22.8 million contract when it expires in May 2026 — meaning a renewal decision is imminent.

The Poynter Institute noted that journalists at Thomson Reuters-owned outlets, including Reuters News and Law360, were among those pushing back against the parent company's contracts. The episode puts Thomson Reuters in an unusual position: a major global news organization whose separate data business is at the center of a controversy over AI-powered immigration targeting.

Neither Palantir nor DHS responded to 404 Media's requests for comment on how ELITE specifically uses CLEAR data. The contracts themselves — covering a $30 million ImmigrationOS deal running through 2027 — are publicly available in federal procurement records.

What This Means

The story illustrates how commercial data brokers — companies most people associate with journalism or legal research — sit inside immigration enforcement infrastructure without public debate or legislative authorization. The data flowing through CLEAR was collected under commercial terms, often from public records or corporate filings, not under any immigration-enforcement warrant. It is then processed through AI scoring systems that assign confidence ratings to home addresses and direct enforcement agents accordingly.

The IRS, Social Security Administration, Department of Health and Human Services, and commercial brokers like Thomson Reuters are all described in internal ICE materials as sources feeding ELITE's targeting map — a convergence of government and private data in a system designed to find and detain people at scale. Whether that system operates within the legal constraints Thomson Reuters says it enforces is the central unanswered question heading into May's contract renewal decision.