Tech Workers Urge CEOs to Oppose ICE Actions Following Alex Pretti’s Death
In the wake of escalating federal immigration enforcement and the recent fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital, over 450 employees from leading technology companies—including Google, Meta, OpenAI, Amazon, and Salesforce—have signed an open letter. This letter calls upon their CEOs to demand that the White House withdraw U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from American cities.
The letter, organized by the group IceOut.Tech, states: For months now, Trump has sent federal agents to our cities to criminalize us, our neighbors, friends, colleagues, and family members. 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 epicenter 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.
The letter emphasizes the potential influence of the tech industry in effecting change: This cannot continue, and we know the tech industry can make a difference. 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.
Several 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.
Despite these individual statements, many of the most powerful figures in tech have not only largely stayed quiet about opposition to the Trump administration’s directives, but they have also 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 have 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.
