{"id":431431,"date":"2026-01-26T20:42:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T20:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/431431\/"},"modified":"2026-01-26T20:42:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T20:42:14","slug":"tech-workers-call-for-ceos-to-speak-up-against-ice-after-the-killing-of-alex-pretti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/431431\/","title":{"rendered":"Tech workers call for CEOs to speak up against ICE after the killing of Alex Pretti"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than 450 tech workers from companies like Google, Meta, OpenAI, Amazon, and Salesforce have signed a letter<\/a> urging their CEOs to call the White House and demand that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) leave U.S. cities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFor months now, Trump has sent federal agents to our cities to criminalize us, our neighbors, friends, colleagues, and family members,\u201d reads the open letter from IceOut.Tech. \u201cFrom Minneapolis to Los Angeles to Chicago, we\u2019ve seen armed and masked thugs bring reckless violence, kidnapping, terror and cruelty with no end in sight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Minneapolis has become the focal point of a large-scale federal immigration operation, employing tactics so intense that many have characterized it as a military occupation<\/a>. 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis cannot continue, and we know the tech industry can make a difference,\u201d the letter from tech industry workers continues. \u201cWhen Trump threatened to send the National Guard<\/a> to San Francisco in October, tech industry leaders called the White House. It worked: Trump backed down<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The campaign among tech workers began after ICE agents shot and killed U.S. citizen Renee Good<\/a> in Minneapolis three weeks ago, and it grew over the weekend after Border Patrol agents shot and killed Alex Pretti<\/a>, a 37-year-old ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital.<\/p>\n

The organizers of the letter did not disclose their names, and many who signed the letter did so anonymously out of fear of retribution.\u00a0TechCrunch has reached out for more information.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A number of tech leaders have already spoken out against federal actions in Minneapolis. LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman<\/a> said the way ICE operates is \u201cterrible for the people,\u201d and Khosla Ventures founder Vinod Khosla called the current enforcement<\/a> \u201cmacho ICE vigilantes running amuck empowered by a conscious-less administration.\u201d Google DeepMind\u2019s chief scientist Jeff Dean called for \u201cevery person regardless of political affiliation\u201d to denounce the escalation of violence<\/a>. OpenAI\u2019s head of global business, James Dyett, criticized the industry\u2019s silence, posting on X<\/a> that \u201cthere is far more outrage from tech leaders over a wealth tax than masked ICE agents terrorizing communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Techcrunch event<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Signal president Meredith Whittaker<\/a> bemoaned that masked agents are \u201cexecuting people in the streets and powerful leaders are openly lying to cover for them. To everyone in my industry who\u2019s ever claimed to value freedom \u2014 draw on the courage of your convictions and stand up.\u201d <\/p>\n

Anthropic\u2019s CEO Dario Amodei on Monday posted<\/a> about the importance of \u201cpreserving democratic values and rights at home,\u201d particularly given the \u201chorror we\u2019re seeing in Minnesota.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, many of the most powerful figures in tech have not only largely stayed quiet about opposition to the Trump administration\u2019s directives, but they have also actively attempted to curry favor with the president. Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook<\/a>, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg all attended during President Trump\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

OpenAI president Greg Brockman and his wife, Anna, are also prominent donors to causes and candidates associated with President Trump<\/a> and have refrained from speaking out. In keeping with his anti-immigration views, Elon Musk has actively supported ICE operations, calling protestors \u201cpure evil.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

The letter also calls on tech CEOs to cancel all company contracts with ICE \u2014 potentially an expensive demand, as several tech firms currently hold contracts with ICE<\/a>. Palantir is one of ICE\u2019s most significant tech partners. Last year the company was awarded a $30 million contract<\/a> to build a new AI-driven surveillance platform<\/a> called \u201cImmigrationOS.\u201d Last year, facial-recognition company Clearview AI signed a contract<\/a> to provide ICE with facial-matching technology. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft,<\/a> and Oracle<\/a> also provide cloud infrastructure to the Department of Homeland Security and ICE, as well as IT services.<\/p>\n

TechCrunch has reached out to the companies for comment.<\/p>\n

Got a sensitive tip or confidential documents? We\u2019re reporting on the inner workings of the AI industry \u2014 from the companies shaping its future to the people impacted by their decisions. Reach out to Rebecca Bellan at rebecca.bellan@techcrunch.com or Russell Brandom at russell.brandom@techcrunch.com. For secure communication, you can contact them via Signal at @rebeccabellan.491 and @russellbrandom.49.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 450 tech workers from companies like Google, Meta, OpenAI, Amazon, and Salesforce have signed a letter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[28,2483,204649,644],"class_list":["post-431431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ice","tag-ice-out","tag-trump-administration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}