More than 450 tech workers from companies like Google, Meta, OpenAI, Amazon, and Salesforce have signed a letter urging their CEOs to call the White House and demand that United States Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) leave U.S. cities.
“For months now, Trump has sent federal agents to our cities to criminalize us, our neighbors, friends, colleagues, and family members,” reads the open letter from IceOut.Tech. “From Minneapolis to Los Angeles to Chicago, we’ve seen armed and masked thugs bring reckless violence, kidnapping, terror and cruelty with no end in sight.”
Minneapolis has become the focal point of a large-scale federal immigration operation, employing tactics so intense that many have characterized it as a military occupation. The operation has been marked by confrontations 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 the tech industry can make a difference,” the letter from tech industry workers continues. “When Trump threatened to send the National Guard to San Francisco in October, tech industry leaders called the White House. It worked: Trump backed down.”
The campaign among tech workers began after ICE agents shot and killed U.S. citizen Renee Good in Minneapolis three weeks ago, and it grew over the weekend after Border Patrol agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital.
The organizers of the letter did not disclose their names, and many who signed the letter did so anonymously out of fear of retribution. TechCrunch has reached out for more information.
A number of tech leaders have already spoken out against federal actions in Minneapolis. LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman said the way ICE operates is “terrible for the people,” and Khosla Ventures founder Vinod Khosla called the current enforcement “macho ICE vigilantes running amuck empowered by a conscious-less administration.” Google DeepMind’s chief scientist Jeff Dean called for “every person regardless of political affiliation” to denounce the escalation of violence. OpenAI’s head of global business, James Dyett, criticized the industry’s silence, posting on X that “there is far more outrage from tech leaders over a wealth tax than masked ICE agents terrorizing communities.”
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Signal President Meredith Whittaker bemoaned that masked agents are “executing people in the streets and powerful leaders are openly lying to cover for them. To everyone in my industry who’s ever claimed to value freedom — draw on the courage of your convictions and stand up.”
Still, many of the most powerful figures in tech leaders have not only largely stayed quiet about opposition to the Trump administration’s directives, but they have actively attempted to curry favor with the president. Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg all attended during President Trump’s inauguration and donated to the inauguration fund either personally or through their corporations. None have spoken out publicly about the ramping up of ICE raids.
OpenAI president Greg Brockman and his wife Anna are also prominent donors to causes and candidates associated with President Trump, and has refrained from speaking out. In keeping with his anti-immigration views, Elon Musk has actively supported ICE operations, calling protestors “pure evil.”
The letter also calls on tech CEOs to cancel all company contracts with ICE — potentially an expensive demand, as several tech firms currently hold contracts with ICE. Palantir is one of ICE’s most significant tech partners. Last year the company was awarded a $30 million contract to build a new AI-driven surveillance platform called “ImmigrationOS.” Last year, facial recognition company Clearview AI signed a contract to provide ICE with facial-matching technology. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and Oracle also provide cloud infrastructure to the Department of Homeland Security and ICE, as well as IT services.
TechCrunch has reached out to the companies for comment.
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Source: techcrunch.com
