Two U.S. senators and a congressman from Connecticut are facing criticism from immigrant rights advocates for accepting campaign contributions from a tech company assisting federal deportation efforts.
Advocates protested in Bridgeport and Hartford, calling on officials to stop accepting contributions from Palantir Technologies Inc.
One of the demonstrators, Make the Road CT organizer Teresa Quintana, said the three officials have yet to speak to her organization, but she said the donations risk hurting their reputations with immigrant rights advocates.
“They need to stop receiving this money because it's dirty, and they need to put that money or donate that money to another cause that actually is good for the community,” Quintana said.
Sens. Chris Murphy, Richard Blumenthal and Rep. Jim Himes, all Democrats, received contributions from employees of Palantir or its political action committee between 2023 and 2025, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records.
Blumenthal received over $11,000 in 2023 from an employee. Murphy and Himes received over $3,000 from employees and a PAC associated with Palantir. The company’s software has been used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to help locate and apprehend undocumented people for deportation.
The protests come days before Blumenthal is set to hold a public forum to discuss civil rights abuses committed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, next week in Washington D.C.
Blumenthal, Murphy and Himes’ offices did not answer requests for comment as of Thursday. The company, according to previous reports, has been a contractor for ICE since 2011, but their AI software has been used by ICE since September of 2025.
The last known contribution by an employee or PAC was made to Himes in March of 2025, weeks before Business Insider reported Palantir’s ImmigrationOS software would be used by ICE.
Quintana worries that the company’s relationship with ICE could deepen.
“They are persecuting our communities and using this kind of technology to target our undocumented communities for now, because we don't know what's going to happen in the future, and that is what we are trying to tell them,” Quintana said. “This is what happened, and we don't want you to get any more money.”
But while advocates like Quintana criticized lawmakers for accepting donations from Palantir, citing concerns over immigration enforcement, Palantir says it has a council on civil liberties made up of attorneys and technological experts, advising the company on potential impacts their software and tools could have on civil liberties in the United States.
