State officials overseeing public-worker pension fund investments in New Jersey were told to shed a stake valued at more than $130 million in a technology firm playing a key role in President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement.
Roughly two dozen members of the public spoke out against Palantir Technologies during Wednesday’s public meeting of the New Jersey State Investment Council.
Some fought back tears as they demanded state pension fund managers divest holdings that were worth $130.9 million as of Nov. 30, according to state officials.
A longtime government contractor, Palantir has active contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, according to federal contracting databases. Its artificial-intelligence platform allows clients, including military, police and other government and corporate customers, to comb through digital data and personal information.
In addition to contracting with the U.S. government, Palantir has also reportedly worked as a contractor with the Israeli Defense Ministry in recent years amid the war in Gaza.
“People of faith, people of conscience, are outraged at government intrusion into our lives, the wholesale terror of our immigrant neighbors and the slaughter and genocide of the Palestinian people,” said the Rev. Annie Allen, a pastor at the Rutherford Congregational Church who was among those speaking out during Wednesday’s meeting.
“People in New Jersey want responsible investing, want investing that promotes life and not death, that promotes Democracy and not dictatorship,” Allen said.
The hardline immigration enforcement ordered by the Republican Trump during his second term has sparked outrage and widespread protests, more so after the recent killing of two U.S. citizens in Minnesota. Federal agents have flooded that state in recent weeks, rounding up immigrants and American citizens alike, as part of an aggressive, anti-immigration dragnet.
There is a higher call of your fiduciary duty, and that higher call is to uphold human rights, and to uphold the U.S. Constitution. — Myles Drake Zhang, historian
While on a much smaller scale, federal immigration operations have also roiled several New Jersey communities, including Morristown, where a high school student was reportedly detained during a laundromat raid.
Roxbury officials are also on high alert as ICE is reportedly considering their community for a detention center site.
And last year, U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-10th) was charged with assault after a scuffle with ICE agents occurred as she was attempting to carry out an oversight visit at Delaney Hall, an immigrant detention center in Newark. McIver is fighting the charges and says the case is politically motivated.
Omayma Mansour, a senior adviser with CAIR Action New Jersey, a Muslim civic-advocacy organization, pointed to the two recent deaths in Minnesota as she urged for divestment of the pension fund’s Palantir shares.
“These deaths have sparked national outrage and protest and calls for accountability, from all of our communities, nationwide,” Mansour said.
“These incidents highlight what many of us already know,” Mansour said. “When we invest in tools that empower agencies like ICE, without safeguards, we are complicit, you are all complicit.”
Maria Dorigo of Montclair told council members she is an immigrant from Argentina whose father was kidnapped and killed decades ago for his political activism in her native country.
“We must not invest in the destruction of communities, at home and abroad,” Dorigo said.
In New Jersey, public-worker pension benefits are funded with regular payments from workers, as well as taxpayers, via employer contributions, such as those funded in state government’s annual budget.
State pension-fund assets are also professionally managed by employees working for the Department of the Treasury’s Division of Investment, as well as outside fund managers, all under the oversight of the 15-member investment council.
While some investments are banned by state law, state pension-fund managers also have a general fiduciary responsibility to act in the best interest of government retirees, who often rely on their pension benefits as a primary source of retirement income.
Several of those speaking out Thursday said they understood that fiduciary duty to beneficiaries, even as they argued for the divestment of the Palantir shares.
Among them was historian Myles Drake Zhang, who urged the council members to take a broader view, comparing recent events to 1930s Germany, and the rise to power of the Nazis.
“There is a higher call of your fiduciary duty, and that higher call is to uphold human rights, and to uphold the U.S. Constitution,” Zhang said.
As the public comment portion of the meeting ended, council chair Deepak Raj addressed the speakers as a group, saying he appreciated their advocacy, and “relaying your point of view to us.”
“I don’t have a response to that, right away, but we will definitely think about what you’ve said,” Raj said.
Peter Thiel, a right-leaning political donor and venture capitalist with an obsession with the Lord of the Rings books, founded Palantir and owns at least 10% of it, records filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission show.
Indeed, the company name comes from the fiction series. In it, a “palantír” is an unbreakable crystal ball that can be used to distort truth.
The firm’s business grew sharply last year, driven by U.S. commercial and government customers, including the U.S. Army, the National Institutes of Health and the departments of health and human services and homeland security.
A media representative from Palantir did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment Wednesday afternoon.
— Benjamin J. Hulac contributed reporting for this story.
This story is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.
