This morning at 10 AM, a group of roughly 100-150 non-violent demonstrators rallied in and around 9200 Sunset Boulevard, the high-rise building in West Hollywood where tech billionaire and Trump mega-donor Peter Thiels' Thiel Capital is located.
Using various entry points, different divisions of the demonstrators entered the building in a coordinated movement, occupying two lobby areas, one around a security desk, the other in the lobby's entrance way.
A smaller group attempted to visit Thiel's personal office to deliver a letter calling on him "to end the use of Palantir Technologies to track down immigrants."
The demonstration was held to highlight and protest Palantir Technologies, the Thiel-backed intelligence and defense company which sells an AI-based data platform that allows its users, notably military and law enforcement agencies, to analyze personal data, including social media profiles, personal information, and physical characteristics, to build information that can lead to the identification, surveillance, arrest, and prosecution of public individuals.
Demonstrators are targeting Palantir for what they say is the technologies use by ICE in identifying and tracking undocumented people. Concerns are building that this technology will be used increasingly to target anyone the government deems as an enemy, from undocumented community members to political foes and protestors.
Today's action was intended in part to "call out [Palantir's] $30 million ICE contract and role in mass deportations," according to a flyer L.A. TACO received from someone involved in the demonstrations. This morning, it was reported that executives from Palantir, Open AI, and Meta have enlisted in the Army Reserves as lieutenant colonels in the newly announced Detachment 201, a unit dedicated to “Executive Innovation."
"We're here in the city of West Hollywood, at Thiel Capital," Jenny Colón, who identified herself as a concerned community member, told L.A. TACO. "Peter Thiel is a venture capitalist, a billionaire, that is running Palantir, a mass-surveillance company, and they are fueling the ICE raids right now in Los Angeles. And they are directly profiting from coming into our communities, kidnapping our citizens, taking the most vulnerable people from our communities, going into schools. And Palantir and Peter Thiel is behind all of this. So we're here at his office to let him know, we stand against him."
A group of about 35 protesters stayed outside 9200 Sunset, including a diverse range of races, ages, and abilities. In an email after the event, a press release from an email address from "palantirtakedown" said the crowd contained people who had had family "kidnapped" by ICE this week.
Together, they yelled out chants like "Say it loud, say it clear, immigrants are welcome here!" and lifting signs towards Sunset Boulevard traffic with slogans such as "Frodo has failed, Peter Thiel has the ring," "Peter Thiel is a vampire," and "Mass movement not mass surveillance," as passing cars frequently honked in support.
Another group remained in the front of the lobby of the building, famously identifiable by its large guitars and oversized basketball sculptures, and as a home to upscale places like Soho House and Boa Steakhouse.
This group held signs aloft while some gave speeches and the massive collectively chanted phrases like "hey hey, ho ho Peter Thiel has got to go!" "ICE get outta L.A.," and "Si se puede!," filling the sterile corporate building with impassioned cheers and shouts. Paper signs were also applied to the glass windows.
"What brought me here today is: Palantir is one of the organizations led by Peter Thiel that collaborates with ICE," said a demonstrator named Fernanda, with Climate Defenders. "He's also part of the billionaire clique that got Trump in power. We're also here to send a message that ICE is not welcome here in L.A. and to stop the raids."
"It affects all of the immigrant community and beautiful social fabric of Los Angeles," Fernanda continued. "Which is really built by immigrants, right? Palantir represents how billionaires make a profit by hurting families. By hurting the most vulnerable. We have to remember: this is just the first step. They're going after immigrants, they're going after the people most vulnerable but they're not going to stop there."
A small group of sheriffs deputies began gathering outside of the building around 11 AM, eventually forming into a group of nine. After discussions with what appeared to be building staff, the deputies stood outside the doors into the building, just outside from where the inside demonstrators continued chanting and marching with signs.
As of noon, the sheriffs deputies had made no attempt to enter the building or engage with protestors directly, as they continued to stand by the doorway, four or five police trucks with flashing lights parked nearby on the eastern corner of the block.
Protestors continued to stand their ground. In total, 13 demonstrators were eventually arrested, according to the release received by L.A. TACO after we'd left the scene, including Colón.
Another person told us a letter to Thiel's office was delivered that called on Palantir to end its aid of ICE and the raids on undocumented people, among other demands. L.A. TACO reached out to Palantir for comment before publishing this story and will update it if we hear back.
It was evident that this morning's protest, while peaceful by design, was nonetheless impassioned.
"It's disgusting how billionaires are here, giving ICE information that is personal information to our people," said Yesenia Miranda-Meza, a self-described community member at the demonstration. "There's no accountability for it. It is infuriating that they have this much power."
"My grandfather came as a bracero," she continued, emphasizing that as an Indigenous woman born in Mexico, she didn't cross the border, the border crossed her. "To create what is here now. They seem to forget that. They seem to forget the United States was built on our backs, on our native peoples' backs."
"Native people have gushed their blood over this country," she said. "And they tell us to get out of our country, our own country, our native land. And that is infuriating."
