Meta Cafeteria Workers Beat ICE in Contract Fight

In June of last year, as federal immigration raids intensified nationwide, a group of cafeteria workers at a Meta office in Bellevue, Washington, made a promise. They vowed to stand together if any one of them faced the Trump administration’s escalating enforcement actions. That commitment was put to the test just months later.

Federal authorities detained Serigne, a Senegalese asylum seeker and the brother of dishwasher Abdoul Mbengue, under a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement program. “I was lost at first, but we had built this community, so I shared the news,” Mbengue explains through a translator. Many of the cooks, dishwashers, and front-of-house staff at the Meta café, known as Crashpad, hail from Africa, the Caribbean, or Ukraine. Several, including Mbengue, are in the country on temporary authorizations while their asylum or immigration cases are pending. The Trump administration has actively sought to restrict such temporary protections and limit permanent asylum grants, though some of these policies face ongoing legal challenges.

Responding to the detention, Mbengue’s colleagues immediately launched a fundraising drive for his brother’s legal defense. Serigne had arrived in 2023 fleeing difficult conditions in Senegal. As the café staff activated their pact, word spread through activist group chats at other major tech firms in the region. A longtime Amazon software engineer, speaking anonymously due to company media policies, donated an initial $100, then contributed another $500 after learning more about what he called a “nightmare.” Contributions totaling thousands of dollars poured in from employees at Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon. Their collective effort succeeded, on February 24, a judge ordered Serigne’s release. “He is back because of the efforts,” Mbengue states.

This episode highlights a significant shift in tech industry activism. A decade ago, workers and executives often joined public protests against immigration bans. Today, as large corporations grow less responsive to internal petitions and avoid taking public stances against federal policies, employees feel compelled to fill the gap. They are providing direct financial and administrative support to vulnerable colleagues, aid they believe their wealthy employers should be offering.

The cafeteria workers at the Bellevue Meta site, along with over 200 colleagues in Redmond, are employed not by Meta directly but by the catering contractor Lavish Roots. Last year, more than 60 percent of these workers requested that both Lavish and Meta respect their right to unionize with Unite Here Local 8. While over 5,000 similar workers at Microsoft, Google, and other Meta offices under different contractors have already unionized, the effort at Lavish has faced resistance. Unite Here organizing director Sarah Jacobson alleges the company has campaigned against the union through mandatory meetings, flyers, texts, and emails. She further claims union supporters have been disciplined, placed under surveillance, and subjected to new rules designed to stifle workplace communication.

While improved wages are a primary goal, the threat of immigration raids has become a powerful motivator for organizing among these Meta contractors. Unionized cafeteria workers at Microsoft, Google, and other tech giants have secured critical protections in their contracts. Their collective bargaining agreements include job security while renewing work permits, and immigration hearings are considered excused absences. “They have the security and ability to live freely,” Mbengue says, referring to his unionized counterparts at Microsoft. These workplaces also have established procedures for handling ICE attempts to enter the premises.

Workers assert these concerns are far from theoretical. They report that on January 29, two individuals wearing clothing marked “DHS” arrived at the reception desk of the Commons building on Microsoft’s Redmond campus. The agents were seeking a specific non-Microsoft employee working onsite but were turned away. Microsoft stated it could not confirm the visitors were law enforcement officers, but the incident reinforced the pervasive anxiety among contract staff about their workplace security and the urgent need for organized protection.