More than 450 employees from America’s most powerful technology companies, including Apple, Google, Meta, OpenAI, Amazon, Microsoft, Salesforce and many others have issued a defiant open letter to their CEOs, demanding they call the White House and demand the Trump administration to order Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents leave US cities. The campaign has been organised under the banner ICEout.Tech and comes soon after federal agents shot and killed a 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Minnesota on January 24.
Tech workers use example of San Francisco to push US government to ‘back down’
The letter describes the example of San Francisco wherein tech leaders spoke against the proposed action and “Trump backed down.” The also cited scenes in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis, calling them “terror and cruelty with no end in sight”.
Minneapolis witnessed two fatal shootings in a span of a month. Renee Good, a US citizen was killed by ICE agents on January 7; and Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital, shot by Border Patrol agents on January 24. Apart from calling for removing ICE agents from cities, the workers also called the company CEOs to cancel a demand for contract cancellations.
Read full letter by tech workers:
Tech demands ICE out of our citiesICEout.tech statement from January 24, 2026: “We condemn the Border Patrol’s killing of Alex Pretti and the violent surge of federal agents across our cities. The wanton brutality we’ve seen from ICE and CBP has removed any credibility that these actions are about immigration enforcement. Their goal is terror, cruelty, and suppression of dissent. This must end.Tech professionals are speaking up against this brutality, and we call on all our colleagues who share our values to use their voice. We know our industry leaders have leverage: in October, they persuaded Trump to call off a planned ICE surge in San Francisco, and big tech CEOs are in the White House tonight. Now they need to go further, and join us in demanding ICE out of all of our cities.” ICEout.tech Pledge:We are tech industry professionals in the United States.We all witnessed ICE brutally kill a US citizen on the streets of Minneapolis. Then, the Trump administration brazenly lied about what happened.We didn’t get here overnight. 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.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.Today we’re calling on our CEOs to pick up the phone again: 1. Call the White House and demand that ICE leave our cities.2. Cancel all company contracts with ICE.3. Speak out publicly against ICE’s violence.We want to be proud to work in tech. We want to be proud of the companies we work for. We can and must use our leverage to end this violence.
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