"You are allowing a genocide to happen against the Palestinian people!" an attendee yelled from the audience before the audio of the town hall's livestream was abruptly cut off.
The heckler's statement was part of a protest against Crow, the Democrat from Colorado's 6th Congressional District, for repeatedly accepting campaign donations from executives of Palantir Technologies. Palantir is a Denver-based software company that supplies AI technology to the Israel Defense Forces for the war in Gaza. It is also a long-time contractor with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, currently building a surveillance platform for ICE.
Since 2021, individuals affiliated with Palantir have contributed $54,625 to Crow's election campaigns — including $13,600 from Palantir CEO Alex Karp, $11,600 from CTO Shyam Sankar, and $15,600 from Mehdi Alhassani, the company's head of government affairs and public policy, according to reports from the Federal Election Commission.
Around two dozen protesters gathered outside the town hall at Arapahoe High School on Tuesday, May 27, to condemn Crow's connection to Palantir. The town hall was also hosted by Bennet, who is running for governor of Colorado.
"Representative Crow can't claim to stand for justice or humanity while standing with Palantir," says Emily Schlichter of Denver Anti-War Action, which organized the demonstration with activist organization Aurora Unidos CSO and Colorado CD7 Watermelon. "We look forward to seeing soon where his priorities really lie: with his constituents or with a company that funds his campaign while harming his community."
Crow doesn't receive money directly from the company via a political action committee, but the numerous individual donations made Palantir Crow's top campaign contributor during the 2024 election, according to Open Secrets; individuals from the company donated $24,825 to his re-election campaign that year. Executives and employees from the company have given Crow $15,500 for the 2026 election so far, based on reports from the Federal Election Commission.
“I refuse to take corporate PAC money because I work for Coloradans, not special interests,” Crow said in a statement to Westword on Friday, following this article's publication. “For years, I have worked to promote transparency and conducted rigorous oversight of federal immigration detention facilities, including GEO’s ICE facility in Aurora. I’ve also called for the end of for-profit detention facilities like GEO.”
The protesters are calling on Crow to divest from Palantir entirely: "We will hold Jason Crow and Michael Bennet accountable for their complicity and inaction on human rights abuses," Aurora Unidos CSO says in a statement.
"We know Palantir has Representative Crow's ear, because they're his biggest donor," Schlichter adds. "We wanted to make sure Representative Crow hears from the people he's actually supposed to represent, who don't want them helping ICE spy on our friends and neighbors or helping Israel bomb Palestinian kids."
Crow spoke about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and immigration during the town hall. In response to the question "What is being done to stop the genocide?," Crow spoke of his work forming the Protection of Civilians in Conflict Caucus, calling the civilian casualties in Gaza "completely unacceptable by any measure."
U.S. Representative Jason Crow (left) and U.S. Senator Michael Bennet during the town hall.
Representative Jason Crow via Facebook
Palantir provides AI systems to help Israel’s war efforts. Israel has reportedly used AI technology to suggest targets for air strikes and to track and identify individuals for assassination, ranking people on a scale of 0 to 100 based on their likelihood of being a militant.
As organizers began to conclude the hour-long town hall, a woman from the crowd shouted an emotional plea for help, saying she and her husband are experiencing immigration issues. Crow said his office has a team dedicated to constituent case work to help with immigration and ICE, giving the woman contact information for his staff.
"We will fight for you," Crow said to the woman, to thunderous applause from the audience. "And I personally will fight for you."
Palantir has been an ICE contractor since 2011. The company's new $30 million contract will reportedly provide ICE with “near real-time visibility” on people self-deporting from the United States, in addition to tracking and managing deportations and helping ICE choose who to deport, prioritizing people who have overstayed visas. In 2019, Palantir was criticized for its technology's use in conducting mass deportation raids and targeting migrant children.
During another town hall earlier this month, Crow said he was "very troubled" by the rapid increase in people incarcerated within the ICE detention center in his district. He said upwards of 1,400 immigrants are currently being held in the Aurora center, up from 200 to 300 before President Donald Trump returned to office in January.
The town hall protesters also spoke against the conditions of that detention center, urging Crow to take action and accusing the GEO Group (which contracts with ICE to operate the facility) of mistreating detainees.
During an earlier town hall in May, Crow said his team regularly visits the facility to "ensure that people are treated properly." Though he noted that ICE liaisons aren't as responsive as they were before Trump returned to office, and federal changes are "making local oversight much harder."
None of the protesters from Aurora Unidos CSO were allowed inside the town hall despite registering in advance, the group claims, noting that the heckler was not one of their members.
"It's very clear who they did and did not want to hear from," says Aurora Unidos CSO.
This article was updated on May 30 to clarify that donations to Jason Crow's campaign came from Palantir Technologies executives, and not the company itself.
