Palantir-linked campaign donations put Democrats in tight spot

Campaign contributions from Palantir are becoming a thorn in the side of Democrats in the midterms, as lawmakers on the left dig into the Trump administration’s immigration efforts and the controversial tech company’s involvement.

Several Democratic candidates have returned or donated funds from top Palantir executives and the company’s political action committee (PAC), distancing themselves from the controversy over the firm’s sizable contracts with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The data analytics and software giant’s PAC and several top executives have donated to candidates in both parties for years, but its contributions are presenting new challenges for Democrats, who are criticizing enforcement tactics and surveillance technology while also running for office and collecting campaign funds.

A campaign spokesperson for Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), who returned a $2,500 donation from the Employees of Palantir PAC earlier this year, told The Hill “we don’t want” Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel’s “money and we don’t want his surveillance in our streets.”

The donation, made to Moulton’s congressional committee before he launched a bid for Sen. Ed Markey’s (D-Mass.) seat, was returned to the PAC in early January, campaign finance filings show.

“As soon as we learned Palantir’s tech was being used against the very community Seth stood beside in Minnesota, we purged their past donations from our books,” the spokesperson told The Hill.

Concerns about ICE and Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) crackdown on immigration reached a boiling point in Minnesota earlier this year, when the White House ramped up the presence of immigration officers in the state. Two U.S. citizens, Alex Pretti and Renee Good, were shot and killed by federal agents in separate incidents in January, amplifying criticism of President Trump’s immigration policy.

As midterm season gets underway, Democrats are seizing on the falling popularity of Trump’s immigration agenda and the companies enlisted to help. Palantir is at the center of this debate, with lawmakers and immigration advocates raising concerns over broader surveillance and privacy implications of the technology.

Palantir, a longtime federal contractor, has scored several high-profile contracts in Trump’s second term, including a $30 million deal with ICE to build an “Immigration Lifestyle Operating System” and a $1 billion purchasing agreement with the DHS.

In the face of Palantir’s reputational challenges, several Democratic candidates have pledged not to take future funds tied to the company or donated contributions to advocacy groups.

“A lot of Democrats are relying very heavily on political mobilization based on the outrage with ICE and the administration,” political strategist Basil Smikle told The Hill. “The questions around why candidates are taking that money and the relationship that they have with these interests is going to become much more important and relevant in these individual campaigns.”

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said in late February he would no longer take such contributions. Khanna also donated the $49,000 he received from Palantir executives — including the company’s chief technology officer Shyam Sankar, chief technology officer for U.S. government work Akash Jain and head of government affairs Mehdi Alhassani — since 2011.

“I am proud to be the first Bay Area member to take the pledge to refuse all future individual contributions from Palantir,” Khanna said last month. “This quarter, I have donated all of the contributions I have ever received from Palantir executives — not just from this cycle.”

Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) also stopped accepting donations from Palantir employees since the company secured a contract to “develop an extensive surveillance platform for ICE last year,” a spokesperson for the senator’s reelection campaign told The Hill on Wednesday.

He is donating previous Palantir-linked funds to nonprofits that provide legal assistance, shelter and other services to immigrants in Colorado, the spokesperson added. Campaign finance filings show he received about $51,000 from Sankar, Jain, Alhassani and Palantir CEO Alex Karp from 2020-25.

Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) similarly pledged to donate Palantir-linked funds after The Colorado Sun inquired about the campaign contributions in February. He received $48,600 from the same four executives over the past five years, according to campaign finance filings.

These four executives, in addition to Jacob Helberg, a former senior adviser to Karp and current Trump administration official, accounted for 85 percent of Palantir employees’ total political contributions since 2006, according to the “Purge Palantir” campaign, which launched a tool earlier this year to track Palantir-linked political contributions.

Palantir has “unmasked the true nature of their politics and vision of government, of what their company should be doing,” said Jacinta González, who works on the Purge Palantir campaign and serves as head of programs at progressive communications organization MediaJustice.

“For that reason, it’s even more important now than it was to have accountability around how they’re using money to be able to manipulate the political environment and also policy,” she said.

Company-affiliated contributions have also been fodder in Democratic primary races. In the race to replace retiring Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), one attack advertisement knocked Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) for receiving money from the company.

“Raja Krishnamoorthi is scared, so he’s misleading you about Juliana Stratton. Because he has something to hide,” the ad said, referring to the Illinois lieutenant governor who ultimately won the Democratic primary last month.

“He’s been taking donations from an ICE contractor for 10 years. During that time, he voted to fund ICE. And when Chicago was being raided, he was taking money from an ICE contractor and even voting to honor ICE. When Illinois needed a fighter, Raja Krishnamoorthi sold us out.”

The Chicago Sun-Times reported in December that Krishnamoorthi donated the $29,300 he received from Sankar to immigrant rights groups, though the congressman’s defunct Senate campaign was not reachable for comment.

In the race for retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler’s (D-N.Y.) seat, an AI super PAC took aim at New York Assembly member Alex Bores in a series of attack ads in January, accusing him of hypocrisy over his work for Palantir. Bores served in various roles at the firm for about four years and says he resigned in 2019 because of the company’s work with ICE.

Bores hit back at the super PAC at the time, accusing it of “targeting lawmakers like me, who want real AI regulation instead of industry handouts.”

It remains to be seen whether Palantir donations will be a “litmus test” in the midterms, but “it will definitely be a way for voters to differentiate candidates, particularly within a Democratic primary,” Smikle said.

A spokesperson for Palantir told The Hill the company will continue its work to protect U.S. troops, target terrorists, ease disaster relief delivery and catch child traffickers.

“We’ll continue to work with and support candidates and elected officials from either party who have a clear-eyed view about these issues and the role Palantir (and technology) plays in making America safer,” the spokesperson added.

The dynamic around Palantir was on full display in the primary for the Democratic nomination to replace retiring Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.).

Michigan state Rep. Mallory McMorrow returned $4,750 that she received from a Palantir business development employee and a company lobbyist last year, a campaign spokesperson confirmed to The Hill.

Her opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), also received $1,500 from two Palantir lobbyists in 2025. She does not plan to return or donate the funds, a campaign spokesperson confirmed. When pressed by The Detroit News in March, the spokesperson argued Stevens is “leading the fight to overhaul ICE” and voted against funding for the agency until “serious reforms” are made.

Democrats have demanded reforms to ICE and CBP, including stricter requirements for judicial warrants, a universal code of conduct for use of force and a ban on masks, in order to fund the DHS. The agency has been shut down since mid-February, though the end could be near as Republicans and Trump reached an agreement Wednesday that will involve a two-step path to reopen the DHS.