A small, but growing number of workers at the largest tech firms are urging their CEOs to oppose Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), even though many of those execs have spent the last year cozying up to the White House.
The campaign emerged earlier this month as a petition that privately attracted signatures from tech workers, according to Wired. It has since gone public as an open letter at ICEout.tech.
Organizers are calling on CEOs to use their leverage with the Trump administration to push for it to scale back ICE operations following two fatal shootings of US citizens in Minnesota. On Saturday, ICE officers shot and killed Alex Pretti; on Jan. 7, another ICE agent fatally shot Renée Good.
Since September, federal immigration officers have shot 12 people, NBC News reports. Eight were injured and four died, including Pretti and Good. Also killed were Villegas González, an undocumented man from Mexico living in the US, and Isaias Sanchez Barboza, a Mexican national who encountered Border Patrol at the US-Mexico border in Texas.
In their letter, ICEout.tech organizers accuse ICE of “reckless violence, kidnapping, terror and cruelty with no end in sight,” adding, “This cannot continue, and we know the tech industry can make a difference,” citing the tech industry’s efforts to stop Trump from sending the National Guard to San Francisco in October.
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The letter is demanding that tech CEOs call the White House and demand that ICE leave US cities; cancel all company contracts with ICE; and speak out publicly against ICE’s violence.
The letter has received support from software engineers, technical staff, and retired employees at companies including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, and OpenAI, among others. But so far, the campaign has only received over 420 signatures, a relatively small number considering companies such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft have workforces with well over 100,000 employees. In addition, only 270 of the signatures include names; the others merely mention the worker’s position, likely to ward off retaliation.
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Tech giants have terminated employees for criticizing them publicly. In 2024, Google fired over two dozen staff following an office sit-in protest over the tech giant’s role in Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion cloud contract between Google, Amazon, and Israel’s government and military.
In August, Microsoft fired four employees for sit-ins and disruptions to its 50th anniversary event over the company’s ties to Israel. It denied that its AI technologies or cloud computing service Azure have been used to target or harm civilians during the ongoing conflict in Gaza, though it later “ceased and disabled” a set of services that Israel’s Ministry of Defense was reportedly using to surveil Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
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In the meantime, many top tech CEOs have met with President Trump and expressed support for his administration. For example, Apple CEO Tim Cook gifted Trump a glass engraving last year while announcing new manufacturing investments in the US. Others like Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg have praised the president for his pro-AI stance.
Over the weekend, Cook joined AMD CEO Lisa Su, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, and others at the White House for a screening of First Lady Melania Trump’s new documentary. Amazon MGM Studios spent a reported $40 million to acquire the film, and another $35 million on marketing, CNN reports.
Still, a few tech leaders have condemned ICE. “This is absolutely shameful,” Google DeepMind Chief Scientist Jeff Dean tweeted about video footage of Pretti’s death.
“There is far more outrage from tech leaders over a wealth tax than masked ICE agents terrorizing communities and executing civilians in the streets,” tweeted OpenAI global business manager James Dyett.
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