Why did Jeff Sessions like us so much?

Back in November, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions (wow.. not fired yet!) had a private meeting with Mitch in order to resolve some public back and forth (involving Jeff Landry and John Kennedy as well) over New Orleans's status as a so-called "Sanctuary City."

In some ways the meeting raised more questions than it answered. Cedric Richmond was either too busy to be there or Sessions didn't want him there. Sessions and Kennedy implied that the city agreed to notify ICE when undocumented immigrants were arrested and to allow ICE to interview arrestees.  But he mayor's spokespeople denied having agreed to that.  They both seemed to agree that the city was in compliance with... whatever Sessions was asking of them. 

"We are pleased that the attorney general and Senator Kennedy have come around to agreeing with the point we have made all along -- New Orleans is not a 'sanctuary city' and the NOPD's policies have maintained consistent compliance ..." Landrieu said in a statement.

Asked for comment after the meeting, Sessions' office issued a statement saying New Orleans "has committed to sharing information with federal law enforcement authorities ..."

But it was never clear exactly how.  Maybe they showed him Palantir. 

Law enforcement agents routinely use bank, telephone, and internet records for investigations, but the extent to which ICE uses social media is not well known.

One of the agents involved in the hunt responded that they could combine the data with “IP address information back from T-Mobile.” Another agent chimed in to say that the agency had sent the phone company an expedited summons for information.

“I am going to see if our Palantir guy is here to dump the Western Union info in there since I know there is a way to triangulate the area he’s sending money from and narrow down time of day etc,” responded Jen Miller, an ICE agent on the email thread.

Palantir is a controversial data analytics firm co-founded by billionaire investor Peter Thiel. The company, which does business with the military and major intelligence agencies, has contracted with ICE since 2014. As journalist Spencer

Woodman reported last year, the company developed a special system for ICE to access a vast “ecosystem” of data to facilitate immigration officials in both discovering targets and then creating and administering cases against them.

At the time no news organization in New Orleans seemed to know anything about Palantir. Otherwise we imagine they probably would have asked about it, since it's clearly relevant.  But this year, when the city's usage of Palantir finally became a point of public controversy thanks to a national news story, our local papers screamed loudly at us that it was "never a secret." So who can say, really?

Anyway NOPD certainly definitely is not using it or anything like it anymore so it's not worth asking about now, probably.