More than 450 technicians from companies like Google, Meta, OpenAI, Amazon and Salesforce have signed a letter urging their CEOs to call the White House and demand that U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) leave American cities.
“For months now, Trump has sent federal agents into our cities to criminalize us, our neighbors, friends, co-workers, and family members,” IceOut.Tech’s open letter reads. “From Minneapolis to Los Angeles to Chicago, we have seen armed, masked thugs sow violence, kidnappings, terror and cruelty with no end in sight. »
Minneapolis became the focal point of a large-scale federal immigration operation, employing tactics so intense that many have characterized it as as military occupation. The operation was marked by clashes between federal agents and community members protesting the raids, with law enforcement indiscriminately deploying crowd control tactics, including pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets and sound cannons.
“This cannot continue, and we know that the technology industry can make a difference,” the letter from technology workers continues. “When Trump threatened to send the National Guard In San Francisco in October, tech industry executives called the White House. This worked: Trump backed down.”
The campaign among tech workers began after ICE agents shot and killed US citizen Renee Good in Minneapolis three weeks ago, and it increased over the weekend after Border Patrol agents shot and killed Alex Prettia 37-year-old intensive care nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital.
The organizers of the letter did not release their names, and many of those who signed the letter did so anonymously for fear of retaliation. TechCrunch requested more information.
A number of tech leaders have already spoken out against the federal actions in Minneapolis. Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn said the way ICE operates is “terrible for people,” and Khosla Ventures founder Vinod Khosla. called the current application “Machist ICE vigilantes are on the rampage, empowered by an unwitting administration.” Google DeepMind chief scientist Jeff Dean called on “every person, regardless of political affiliation,” to denounce the escalation of violence. OpenAI’s head of global affairs, James Dyett, criticized the industry’s silence: publication on that “the outrage among tech executives over a wealth tax is far greater than that of masked ICE agents terrorizing communities.”
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President of Signals Meredith Whittaker lamented that masked agents are “executing people in the streets and powerful leaders blatantly lying to cover them up. To all those in my sector who have always claimed to value freedom, summon the courage of your convictions and stand up.”
Yet many of the tech industry’s most influential figures have not only remained largely silent about their opposition to the Trump administration’s directives, but they have also actively tried to curry favor with the president. Amazon owner Jeff Bezos Tim Cook, Apple CEOSundar Pichai, CEO of Google, and Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, all attended President Trump’s inauguration and donated to the inauguration fund, either personally or through their companies. None of them have spoken publicly about the intensification of ICE raids.
OpenAI President Greg Brockman and his wife Anna are also major donors causes and candidates associated with President Trumpand refrained from speaking out. Consistent with his anti-immigration views, Elon Musk has actively supported ICE operations, calling on protesters “pure evil”.
The letter also calls on tech CEOs to cancel all corporate contracts with ICE – a potentially costly request, like many tech companies currently hold contracts with ICE. Palantir is one of ICE’s most important technology partners. Last year the company was awarded a $30 million contract to build a new AI-based system monitoring platform called “ImmigrationOS”. Last year, a facial recognition company Clearview AI signed a contract to provide ICE with facial matching technology. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, And Oracle also provides cloud infrastructure to the Department of Homeland Security and ICE, as well as IT services.
TechCrunch has contacted the companies for comment.
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