Google staff call for firm to cut ties with ICE

Source: Hacker News

Overview

In an open letter published on Friday, nearly 900 full‑time Google employees demanded more transparency over how the company’s technology is being used by U.S. government agencies.

Google has contracts to provide federal agencies with cloud services and maintains links to work being done on federal immigration enforcement. After the letter was published, a Google employee of seven years said he found it “mind‑boggling” that Google was maintaining its ties with immigration‑enforcement bodies.

The letter follows a separate petition published two weeks earlier and signed by hundreds of workers at various companies—including Amazon, Microsoft and Meta—calling for all tech firms to stop supporting the federal immigration crackdown.

In the past year, the Trump administration stepped up its programme to forcibly remove immigrants, sending armed agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) into several cities. Operations to carry out such removals led to two high‑profile killings of U.S. citizens who were observing federal agents.

Employee statements

• Alex, a Google employee of seven years, said:

  “I was proud to be working at a company with a moral compass. I’m not proud anymore.”
  He added that it was “abhorrent” to come to work each day knowing his efforts supported DHS, ICE and CBP, or involved removing apps the authorities deemed “threatening.”

• S, who has worked at Google for about three years, said she would not have joined had she known about the company’s work with federal agencies:

  “This is not the company I signed up to work for – I would have never interviewed to work for a military contractor.”

Both employees said they are speaking out because they object to Google’s work contributing to militarised actions against people. They also criticized Google leadership, including CEO Sundar Pichai, for failing to address the extent of the company’s work with the federal government.

Demands from employees

• Pull Google technology from any work within DHS, ICE, and CBP.
• Provide workers with protection from immigration‑enforcement activities.
• Hold an all‑hands meeting to address employee concerns.

Additional context

• In 2018, after pressure from thousands of employees, Google abandoned a Pentagon contract (Project Maven) that aimed to develop more efficient drone technology for the U.S. military.
• In October, Google announced it had removed several apps from its app store that allowed users to report and document sightings of ICE agents; Apple made a similar move.
• Beyond cloud services, Google entered last year into partnerships with Lockheed Martin to deploy Gemini AI models in unnamed products and services, and with Palantir, a U.S. firm that supplies technology used in DHS, ICE, CBP, and all six branches of the U.S. military.

A Google spokesperson declined to comment.