ICE agents patrol a neighborhood in Minneapolis on Wednesday.OCTAVIO JONES/AFP/Getty Images
Hootsuite Inc. chief executive officer Irina Novoselsky acknowledged the harm caused by the tactics of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in a letter to employees Wednesday but again defended the Vancouver tech company’s business relationship with the agency.
“What we are watching unfold right now is wrong,” she wrote. “The loss of life and the fear being felt in communities as a result of recent enforcement actions are devastating.”
Ms. Novoselsky, who is based in New York, did not specifically mention the role of ICE or other federal agents in the shooting deaths of Renee Nicole Macklin Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis this month. “Beyond how painful it has been to process the current situation on a personal level, we have also felt the concern expressed about Hootsuite’s work with ICE’s public affairs office,” she wrote.
Vancouver social-media company Hootsuite looking to work with ICE to ‘build trust’
The letter is posted to a publicly available Hootsuite website, but the company does not appear to be linking to the page or distributing the letter externally. Ms. Novoselsky has not responded to numerous requests for comment nor had she previously addressed the company’s contract with ICE publicly. Hootsuite spokeswoman Catherine Kee said in an e-mail Wednesday that “we don’t have anything further to add” beyond the contents of the letter, which “reflects Hootsuite’s position.”
News of the extent of Hootsuite’s business with ICE and sister federal agency U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was reported last week in The Globe and Mail, including a US$95,000 pilot project secured with ICE in September. U.S. government contractor Seneca Strategic Partners in New York State also has a US$2.8-million contract with the Department of Homeland Security, which both ICE and the CBP fall under, to use Hootsuite for social-media management.
Those engagements have led to public criticism of the company. A group called Democracy Rising has planned a protest in front of Hootsuite’s headquarters in Vancouver this Friday to press the company to cancel its ICE contract “and publicly apologize.” Civil-society non-profit OpenMedia has also organized a campaign to press Hootsuite to drop its work with ICE.
Hootsuite CEO says ICE contract will stand as long as agency honours terms and conditions
In recent messages on the company’s internal Slack channels viewed by The Globe, Hootsuite employees discussed removing or downplaying references to specific customers on its website.
One employee wrote on Slack that people have been tagging Hootsuite customers on social media, and asked whether Hootsuite should remove the case-studies section from its website, which features client success stories. Another asked whether Hootsuite could control content surfaced by Google searches that relates to Hootsuite’s case studies.
A number of high-profile American CEOs have issued memos to employees recently about the federal government’s aggressive immigration crackdown. Apple CEO Tim Cook called for “de-escalation” in a letter to employees Wednesday while OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote that “what’s happening with ICE is going too far” in his own internal memo. Dozens of CEOS of Minnesota-based companies, including Target and Best Buy, wrote an open letter calling on “state, local and federal officials to work together to find real solutions.”
Opinion: Shame on Hootsuite for abandoning Canadian values in taking ICE contract
In her letter Wednesday, Ms. Novoselsky said she wanted to share her thoughts “candidly, human to human.” As she did on an all-hands call with employees last week, she held firm to the company’s decision to maintain its contract with ICE.
“We’ve worked with government organizations across countries and administrations for more than 15 years, including the U.S. government,” she wrote. “Our use-case with ICE does not include tracking or surveillance of individuals using our tools. Any claim otherwise is false and prohibited under our terms of service, which we actively enforce.”
Hootsuite’s tools, Ms. Novoselsky continued, help organizations “understand what people are saying using unbiased, authentic social data – this helps them understand how people are feeling, and where trust is being earned or lost.” Monitoring “real conversations leads to insights that drive better decisions and accountability, without endorsing specific actions or policies.”
Ms. Novoselsky, who became CEO in 2023, is taking a different approach to her predecessor Tom Keiser. He also faced backlash in September, 2020, from Hootsuite employees related to an earlier contract with ICE.
Mr. Keiser cancelled the deal and stated publicly the contract had “created a divided company, and this is not the kind of company I came to lead.”