Rep. Ryan Says He Will Donate Funds

Received campaign money from firm tied to ICE
Rep. Pat Ryan, a Democrat whose district includes Beacon, said on Feb. 4 that he will donate campaign funds he received from employees of a data analytics firm that supplies software for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Days earlier, For the Many, a Kingston nonprofit, called on Ryan to donate the funds to immigrant advocacy groups. They had come from employees of Palantir Technologies, a firm co-founded by conservative billionaire Peter Thiel, who also co-founded Paypal.

Federal immigration officials contracted with Palantir to create software that uses artificial intelligence and data mining to identify, track and deport immigrants. Palantir was scheduled to deliver a prototype of its ImmigrationOS platform to the agency by September 2025 as part of a two-year contract worth $30 million.
Jonathan Bix, the executive director of For the Many, told the Daily Freeman that the organization had been alerted to the campaign funding via the website purgepalantir.com. He said the group was surprised to see Ryan listed, among all Democratic federal lawmakers, as receiving the most support from Palantir.
According to the website, Ryan has received $134,600 from Palantir employees, including its top executives, since being elected in 2021. But a search of campaign finance disclosures at the Federal Election Commission shows a total of $93,300 in contributions from 17 individuals who said they were employed at Palantir in that period. Ryan received $36,500 from 11 Palantir employees in 2025, according to the FEC. As of Dec. 31, he had about $2.5 million on hand for his 2026 re-election campaign.
Rep. Josh Riley, a Democrat whose district includes northern Dutchess County, has received $76,601 from nine Palantir employees since 2021, when he first ran for Congress. He received $15,000 from five Palantir executives in 2025.
Rep. Mike Lawler, a Republican whose district includes Philipstown, received $9,900 from two Palantir employees in 2024, according to FEC records.

Purge Palantir said that the Denver-based company appears to be "cultivating relationships with promising, younger tech- and defense-friendly Democrats." Ryan serves on the House Armed Services Committee and Riley is a member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.
Although For the Many posted online that it had "we successfully pressured Pat Ryan to refuse future contributions from ICE contractors and to donate past ones to local immigrant defense," Ryan said his decision was not in response to pressure from the activist group.
"This was something I've been thinking about for a while, even before these last two horrific instances, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, which were straight up murder and in Alex's case … an execution," he told the Daily Freeman. "I've been thinking and working to find all the points of leverage and ways to push back and make clear where I stand, which is strongly against this abuse of power and dangerous and unconstitutional behavior."
He said he did not believe that ICE should be abolished. "To me, the choice can't be between no border security and Trump's ICE murdering people in the street," he said. "That is not a choice any of my constituents want."