As public anger at President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown swells both locally and nationwide, U.S. Rep. Pat Ryan said this week that he will reject campaign contributions linked to contractors working on behalf of federal immigration enforcement agencies. The announcement comes a few days after a Kingston-based progressive Super PAC blasted Ryan for accepting contributions from executives at tech giant Palantir.

“I’ve never taken a cent of corporate PAC money. But with the dangerous, unlawful and un-American overreach by ICE, we need to take an even stronger stand,” Ryan said in a statement issued Tuesday afternoon. “That’s why I’m refusing contributions from executives at ICE contractors, and donating any prior contributions to local non-profits supporting immigrants' legal defense in the Hudson Valley. I’m proud to be in this fight alongside each and every one of you — I’m confident that those on the side of justice, accountability, and humanity will prevail.”

Run by Republican mega-donor and PayPal founder Peter Thiel, Palantir develops data analytics and intelligence-gathering software for military, law enforcement and corporate use. The company has drawn the ire of opponents of the immigration crackdown for its ELITE (Enhanced Leads Identification and Targeting for Law Enforcement) platform, which was developed especially for ICE. The software pulls data from a wide variety of government and private-sector sources to create digital maps that include information about potential deportation targets in any given area.

In a Jan. 30 social media post, left-leaning Super PAC and social justice advocacy nonprofit For the Many alleged that Ryan had received $134,000 in campaign donations from Palantir employees, more than any other Democrat in Congress. The group pulled the data from the website purgepalantir.com. The website claims to have compiled a list of members of Congress who have received donations from Palantir employees through analysis of Federal Election Commission records. Along with Ryan, Hudson Valley U.S. Rep Josh Reilly, who represents the neighboring 19th Congressional District and high-profile progressive U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California) were on the list of Democratic representatives who had received individual contributions from Palantir employees. The site alleged the contributions. Part of what the website claims is a trend in which, “Palantir [sic] $$$ went towards cultivating relationships with promising, younger tech- and defense-friendly Democrats.”

Members of Ryan’s team speaking on background dispute the $134,000 figure, saying that while they were still compiling numbers they appeared to be “significantly lower.” Information from the website Opensecrets.com suggests that Ryan received $49,513 in individual contributions from Palantir employees during the 2023-24 election cycle. None of the money came from Thiel or any political action committee affiliated with the corporation.

Ryan has strongly opposed the immigration crackdown, joining fellow House Dems in filing articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and voting twice to block homeland security funding as part of a gambit by Democrats to wring concessions from Trump, including an end to roving patrols by ICE and the unmasking of immigration agents. Last week, Ryan held an event in Chester to protest plans by DHS to convert a warehouse in the Orange County Town of Chester into an ICE detention center.

But that's not enough, For the Many Executive Director Jonathan Bix told Kingston Wire. He said Ryan should donate all of the Palantir funding to local organizations like Ulster Immigrant Defense Network and join in calls to outright abolish ICE. Bix added that while Ryan may not have taken money directly from the corporation, he believed donations from individual employees amounted to an effort to influence Ryan on its behalf.

“His donations were from senior leadership and C-suite executives at [Palantir]. I think it’s generally understood that corporations get around contribution limits by having their high-level executives make contributions,” said Bix. “So when we’re talking about [the American Israeli Political Action Committee, or AIPAC] mostly what people are talking about are contributions from individuals that are clearly on behalf of that entity and it’s the same thing with Palantir contributions, I would say.”

A member of Ryan’s campaign team speaking on background said that For the Many did not convey their demands or otherwise contact the campaign prior to posting the online petition, something they said could have avoided a Democrat-on-Democrat spat during a high-stakes election year. The staffer added that discussions on rejecting individual contributions from ICE contractors had been ongoing prior to the social media post and denied that it had forced Ryan’s hand on the issue.

This is not the first time in his career that Ryan has come under fire for his association with tech firms involved in data analytics on behalf of the military and law enforcement. A former U.S. Army infantry battalion intelligence officer who served two tours in Iraq, Ryan spent two years following his discharge working in Afghanistan for Palantir subcontractor Berico Technologies. He would go on to co-found another intelligence technology company, Praescient Analytics, and was working as a senior vice president for artificial intelligence platform Dataminr prior to entering the 2018 Democratic primary for what was then New York’s 19th Congressional District.

During his ultimately unsuccessful primary bid, opponents running to Ryan’s left in the six-way contest accused him of contributing to the rise of police-state technology. Ryan, meanwhile, said he had been inspired to work in the field by an incident in Iraq in which members of his unit were killed in a roadside bomb attack, something he attributed to a lack of intelligence on the route they were taking through hostile territory. Ryan defended his work as an effort to develop tools to prevent similar tragedies befalling U.S. forces.

Ryan served as Ulster County executive from 2019 to 2022 before winning the 18th Congressional District seat, which covers all of Orange and Dutchess and much of Ulster County, in a special election. He faces a challenge from Republican media executive Sharanjit Thind.