Denver Protesters Gather Outside of Palantir Offices to Condemn ICE

Denver protesters rallied outside the Cherry Creek offices of data giant Palantir to show solidarity with the ICE Out of Minnesota Day of Freedom on Friday, January 23, as recent events tied to aggressive immigration enforcement and the death of Renee Good inspire activism nationwide.

“As a patriot, as someone who loves this country, I feel I have to be out here with my fellow citizens, take a stand,” Todd Jeffries, a Conifer resident, told Westword while holding a United States flag. “A lot of us are scared, and we want to do what we can to send a message that this has got to end.”

Upwards of fifty protesters stood bundled up in nineteen-degree weather outside of the sleek offices of Palantir, a software company that contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to organize and analyze data the federal agency collects. Palantir moved its headquarters from Silicon Valley to downtown Denver in August 2020, and then moved to 205 Detroit Street in Cherry Creek in 2025. In June, Denver protesters marched to Palantir’s old downtown offices in response to contracts with ICE and the Israeli Defense Forces.

The service employees union SEIU Local 105 and Colorado WINS, a union for state employees, organized Friday’s protest “to highlight how corporations profit from surveillance systems that fuel fear, deportation, and harm in working-class communities,” according to the group. SEIU members who spoke to the crowd mentioned Palantir’s ImmigrationOS platform, developed for $30 million in September so ICE could “identify, track, and deport suspected noncitizens,” according to the American Immigration Council.

Protester Foster Shay, a member of the SEIU, admits he doesn’t know a lot about Palantir, but showed up outside its offices because he heard about the company’s surveillance platform.

“Being surveilled all the time is not good for resistance,” Shay said. “I’m mostly out here for being against ICE. …What got me and my fellow unions to brave the cold is the powerlessness that the powers that be think we have, the violence that’s been experienced and the lack of justice for Renee Good.”

Many of the protesters’ signs and speeches mentioned Good, a former Colorado resident who was fatally shot by ICE agents during an immigration raid in Minnesota on January 7. Days after Good’s death, hundreds of Denver protesters, including immigrant activist Jeanette Vizguerra, marched to show support as cities nationwide saw similar demonstrations.

On January 14, an ICE agent shot another unarmed person in Minneapolis when an undocumented Venezuelan tried to avoid arrest during a targeted traffic stop. Denver protesters brought up the incident on Friday, along with news from the same morning that a five-year-old in Minnesota and his father were arrested by ICE on their way home from preschool and sent to Texas for detention.

The Twin Cities metro has been the target of Operation Metro Surge, a large-scale immigration enforcement campaign. In a January 19 press release, ICE said the operation has led to the arrest of 10,000 undocumented immigrants. However, Operation Metro Surge has also made Minneapolis the heart of growing activism. On Thursday, January 22, Vice President JD Vance visited Minneapolis to defend federal agents and urged local officials to “tone down the temperature” and “meet us halfway.”

The ICE Out of Minnesota Day of Freedom was organized by Minnesota-based activists, who are calling for an afternoon rally in Minneapolis and an economic blackout, but solidarity movements are planned nationwide and throughout the weekend. Indivisible, a network of protest organizers, has actions planned in Thornton on Friday evening and in Bear Valley on Saturday morning.