Silicon Valley Workers Campaign to Remove ICE From Cities
▼ Summary
– During the first Trump administration, prominent tech executives like Sergey Brin and Jeff Bezos publicly opposed policies such as the travel ban.
– In contrast, current tech executives recently attended a private White House event, highlighting a shift in industry leadership’s stance.
– Tech employees have launched the ICEout.tech movement, demanding executives cancel contracts with ICE and condemn its violent tactics.
– Worker-led activism was common previously, but such movements now feel revolutionary as employees have been quieter recently.
– Some Silicon Valley leaders have begun speaking out against ICE, prompting internal discussions about the industry’s future role.
The landscape of corporate activism has shifted dramatically in recent years, with a notable quieting of internal dissent within major technology firms. This makes the emergence of new, worker-led campaigns particularly significant. A recent open letter, ICEout.tech, represents a direct challenge to this trend, calling on tech executives to sever ties with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The campaign, now signed by over a thousand employees from across the industry, demands that leaders use their influence to remove ICE agents from American cities, cancel lucrative government contracts, and publicly condemn the agency’s documented use of violence.
This push stands in stark contrast to the more vocal corporate resistance seen during the previous presidential administration. At that time, high-profile founders and CEOs frequently made public statements against policies like the travel ban. The current climate within Silicon Valley has been markedly different, with management consolidating power and many employees feeling less secure in speaking out. The decision by workers to organize around this issue signals a potential reawakening of tech’s activist conscience, challenging the industry’s recent coziness with political power.
The catalyst for the letter was the recent killing of Renee Nicole Good by federal agents. For early signatories like Lisa Conn, cofounder of Gatheround, the moment presented a clear ethical imperative. “I signed the letter for several reasons,” Conn explains. “A primary one is the sense that we are entering a profound crisis when a government kills people in the streets and then denies or reframes what is clearly documented. It’s an untenable situation.” The campaign argues that by providing technology services to ICE, companies become complicit in these actions, forcing a moral reckoning for an industry that often professes values-driven missions.
The movement seeks to translate employee pressure into concrete corporate policy changes, focusing on the substantial financial relationships between tech giants and federal immigration authorities. While some executives have begun to offer cautious criticism of ICE’s conduct, organizers view these statements as merely a first step. The true measure of success, from their perspective, will be the cancellation of contracts and a definitive withdrawal of technological support, from cloud infrastructure to data analytics, that enables the agency’s operations. This internal campaign tests whether tech workers can still effectively rally to hold their employers, and by extension, their government, accountable.
(Source: Wired)
