More than 100,000 people and advocacy groups have called on Microsoft and other tech companies to drop their contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol.
The demand emerges after progressive groups claim that immigration enforcement agencies have engaged in widespread violations of human rights.
“The trauma of family separation will run deep for the children and families involved and big tech companies play a huge part in that,” said Jelani Drew, who launched the petition at Fight for the Future. “Technology can be used to protect or violate human rights. Companies like Microsoft and Salesforce have chosen to use their services to violate them all while saying they care about human rights. It’s hypocrisy. That’s why we won’t back down until all tech companies drop their contracts with ICE.”
Before the petition was posted, employees at Microsoft, Salesforce, and Amazon signed open letters indicating that they did not want to work on building software that they said was being used to target immigrant families.
Center for Media Justice, Color of Change, Demand Progress, Defunding Rights and Dissent, Fight for the Future, Free Press, The Nation, Presente.org, and SumOfUs all launched petitions calling for Microsoft, Salesforce, and other tech companies to cease contracts with ICE and Border Patrol.
“Microsoft must honor the demands of its own employees and thousands of people across the country calling on the company to drop its contract with ICE,” Reem Suleiman, who launched the petition at SumOfUs said. “Otherwise, it will forever be remembered as the tech company that powered Trump’s brutal policy of family separation and detention.”
President Trump’s zero tolerance policy on immigration caused a surge in the separation of families crossing illegally into the U.S. Since then, multiple progressive groups and Democratic lawmakers have called the practice a violation of human rights and have blamed ICE and border patrol agents for complying with the policies.
