More than 450 technologists from companies including Google, Meta, OpenAI, Amazon, and Salesforce have signed a letter asking their CEOs to call the White House and demand that ICE be withdrawn from their cities.
“In recent months, Trump has sent federal agents into our cities to criminalize us, our neighbors, friends, colleagues, and families,” IceOut.Tech’s open letter reads. “From Minneapolis to Los Angeles to Chicago, we have seen armed and masked thugs unleash endless acts of reckless violence, kidnapping, terror, and brutality.”
Minneapolis has become the center of a large-scale federal immigration operation, employing tactics so violent that many consider it a military occupation. The operation was marked by clashes between federal agents and local residents protesting the attacks, and law enforcement used pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets, and sonic cannons in indiscriminate crowd control tactics.
“This cannot continue. We know the tech industry can make a difference,” the letter from tech industry employees continues. “When President Trump threatened to send the National Guard to San Francisco in October, technology industry leaders called the White House. It worked, and President Trump backed down.”
The movement among tech workers began three weeks ago after an ICE agent shot and killed American citizen Renee Good in Minneapolis, and expanded over the weekend after a Border Patrol agent shot and killed Alex Preti, 37, an ICU nurse at a Virginia hospital in Minneapolis.
The letter’s organizers did not reveal their names, and many of the letter’s signatories did so anonymously for fear of retaliation. TechCrunch wants more information.
Many tech leaders have already spoken out against the federal government’s actions in Minneapolis. LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman said the way ICE is being run is “terrible for the people,” and Khosla Ventures founder Vinod Khosla called the current enforcement “a macho ICE vigilante group empowered by an unconscious regime running amok.” Jeff Dean, chief scientist at Google DeepMind, called on “everyone, regardless of political affiliation,” to condemn the escalation of violence. OpenAI’s head of global business, James Diet, criticized the industry’s silence, writing on X: “Tech leaders are far more outraged by the wealth tax than by masked ICE agents terrorizing their communities.”
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Signal President Meredith Whitaker lamented, “Undercover police officers are executing people in the streets, and powerful leaders are openly lying to protect them. To all of my fellow Americans who have always said they value freedom, muster the courage of your convictions and stand up.”
Yet many of the most powerful tech industry leaders have not only remained largely silent about their opposition to Mr. Trump, but have also actively sought to curry favor with the president in order to reap the benefits he bestows on those who say they approve of him. Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg all attended President Trump’s inauguration and donated to the inaugural fund either individually or through companies. No one has spoken publicly about increasing ICE raids.
OpenAI President Greg Brockman and his wife, Anna, who are prominent donors to causes and candidates associated with President Trump, also declined to speak. Elon Musk has maintained his anti-immigrant views, actively supporting ICE operations and calling protesters “pure evil.”
The letter also calls on tech company CEOs to terminate all corporate contracts with ICE, a potentially expensive request since several tech companies currently have contracts with ICE. Palantir is one of ICE’s most important technology partners. Last year, the company won a $30 million contract to build a new AI-driven surveillance platform called ImmigrationOS. Last year, facial recognition company Clearview AI signed a deal to provide facial matching technology to ICE. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and Oracle also provide IT services as well as cloud infrastructure to the Department of Homeland Security and ICE.
TechCrunch reached out to each company for comment.
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