More than 450 technologists from companies including Google, Meta, OpenAI, Amazon, and Salesforce have signed a letter demanding their CEOs call the White House and remove U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from U.S. 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 has been marked by clashes between federal agents and local residents protesting the attacks, with law enforcement indiscriminately deploying crowd control tactics including pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets and sonic cannons.
“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 U.S. citizen Renee Good in Minneapolis, and grew over the weekend after Border Patrol agents 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 “all people, regardless of political affiliation” to condemn the escalating violence. OpenAI’s head of global business, James Diet, criticized the industry’s silence, writing on X that “tech leaders are far more outraged by the wealth tax than by masked ICE agents terrorizing their communities.”
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Meredith Whitaker, president of Signal, lamented: “Undercover police officers are executing people in the streets, and powerful leaders are openly lying to protect them. To all of my colleagues who have always said they value freedom, muster the courage of your convictions and stand up.”
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei posted Monday about the importance of “maintaining democratic values and rights in our country,” especially in light of “the horrors we are seeing in Minnesota.”
Still, many of the tech industry’s most powerful figures have not only remained largely silent about their opposition to the Trump administration’s directives, but have actively sought to gain support from the president. 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 with ties to President Trump, have 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, which could be a costly 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.
Do you have confidential information or documents? We report on the inside world of the AI industry, from the companies shaping its future to the people affected by their decisions. Contact Rebecca Bellan (rebecca.bellan@techcrunch.com) or Russell Brandom (russell.brandom@techcrunch.com). For secure communication, you can contact us via Signal at @rebeccabellan.491 and @russellbrandom.49.
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