DHS Files Zero Privacy Impact Assessments in 2026 While Operating $1B No-Bid Palantir Surveillance Network

DHS filed zero Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs) in all of 2026, a dramatic collapse from 24 in 2024 and 8 in 2025. Federal law — the E-Government Act of 2002 — requires agencies to file a PIA before developing or procuring any IT system that collects or disseminates information about the public, including when the agency intends to identify U.S. citizens alongside other data elements. The privacy-assessment blackout is concurrent with DHS’s $1 billion Palantir deal signed in February 2026, which grants every major DHS component — CBP, ICE, FEMA, CISA — access to Palantir’s surveillance platforms without competitive bidding. Documents reveal DHS plans to spend additional hundreds of millions on AI-powered mobile surveillance trucks and 198 border watch towers within the same umbrella arrangement. The DHS Inspector General has accused the agency of “obstructing audits” of biometric data management and immigration enforcement activities.

The zero-PIA year represents the legal-compliance inverse of the Palantir procurement expansion: as the agency’s surveillance apparatus grows to its largest scale in history, its legal disclosure obligations are simply being ignored. This mirrors the congressional-oversight suppression pattern (2026-05-12--ice-new-restrictions-congress-detainee-interviews-prior-approval.md) and the earlier Palantir personnel-capture documented at 2026-04-23--144-trump-appointees-palantir-disclosures.md. The combined picture — 144 Palantir-tied appointees, $1B no-bid contract, zero privacy assessments, obstructed IG audits — constitutes an interlocking capture of DHS’s surveillance procurement that has no analog in the agency’s history.