Shut Up and Focus': Tech Workers Frustrated by Corporate ICE Silence

A pervasive "fear-based culture" and intense pressure to "fall in line" are reportedly stifling dissent within the tech industry. Many tech workers interpret their CEOs' strategic silence as an unspoken directive to "keep your head down, compartmentalize, and don’t make trouble," amidst an escalating immigration crackdown by the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security across the US.

This atmosphere persists as federal agents engage in widespread violence, triggering protests in Minneapolis and nationwide. Despite the killing of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent a month prior, and Alex Pretti by Border Patrol agents two weeks earlier, most tech CEOs have maintained a notable silence. Internally, employees from various companies describe a climate of fear and apprehension regarding the future they are contributing to build.

The Verge conducted interviews with tech professionals at major companies like Microsoft, YouTube, and Google, as well as specialized firms such as biometric verification company CLEAR and medical device/healthcare provider Abbott. A common sentiment emerged: workers felt implicitly, if not explicitly, instructed to adhere to the corporate mission, fearing job repercussions if they deviated. Microsoft, Google, and Abbott declined to comment. However, CLEAR’s chief privacy officer, Lynn Haaland, issued a statement to The Verge, asserting, "We do not work with ICE and never have, full stop."

Many interviewees also noted a striking absence of acknowledgment in company town halls and public communications. Internal forums and messaging platforms were largely devoid of discussions on the situation, with a few exceptions. The Verge viewed several posts on Microsoft’s internal forum, Viva Engage, in a political discussion channel. These posts referenced the intensifying protests in Minneapolis, the actions and victims of ICE, and the Trump administration. Another channel featured posts seeking practical guidance on ICE detention scenarios and recommended documents for employees to carry.

“The dissent I’ve seen is like a whisper,” remarked an anonymous Microsoft Azure employee, expressing fear of retaliation. This individual added that colleagues are hesitant to speak out publicly and unsure whom to trust internally, concluding, “It’s a fear-based culture right now.”

Despite at least eight fatalities attributed to federal agents in 2026 and growing public unrest, chief executives at tech giants including Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, AWS, and OpenAI have remained publicly silent. Privately, Apple CEO Tim Cook and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reportedly circulated internal memos to staff, both advocating for de-escalation and expressing confidence that President Trump would address the situation. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei was a rare public voice, stating in an NBC interview that his company has no contracts with ICE, and posting on X about “the horror we’re seeing in Minnesota” and “the importance of preserving democratic values and rights at home.”

This current lack of response starkly contrasts with past resistance efforts within Big Tech. In 2018, approximately 500 Microsoft employees signed a petition protesting the company's ICE contracts. That same year, thousands of Google workers, including about 4,000 signatories on a petition, successfully opposed the company's "Project Maven" partnership with the Pentagon. The tech industry’s current subdued reaction to ICE’s recent actions also marks a significant departure from their statements in 2018, and their public stances and financial commitments to the Black Lives Matter movement following George Floyd’s murder in 2020.

Concurrently, most tech leaders have actively sought to ingratiate themselves with President Trump since his return to office. This includes donating to his inauguration fund or the main pro-Trump super PAC, dining with him at the White House, and issuing public statements praising the administration’s perspectives on technology and AI. Many have also substantially increased their government collaborations, either developing products specifically for military, defense, and intelligence agencies—like Anthropic’s Claude Go or OpenAI’s ChatGPT Go—or maintaining and expanding contracts with DHS, ICE, and other agencies involved in the immigration crackdown, such as Palantir. A grassroots movement has emerged, calling for consumers to boycott Microsoft, Amazon, OpenAI, and other companies to signal disapproval of the Trump administration's anti-immigrant policies.

An anonymous YouTube employee, also fearing retaliation, voiced deep frustration: “I am personally frustrated that companies have cozied up to Trump, told their workers to just kind of shut up and focus on the mission, and not make any distinctions about what the company actually stands for at this moment in time. Are you on the side of democracy? Are you on the side of terrorizing our populace? Are you on the side of ripping people from their families, arbitrary deportations, arbitrary detentions, multiple deaths at the hands of ICE now? Are you in favor of that? Where do you stand?”

A recent petition, signed by over 1,000 Google employees, outlines demands for leadership to acknowledge and “publicly call for urgent government responses to this crisis.” It also calls for the company to host an “emergency Q&A session for workers” regarding Google’s contracts with DHS, CBP, and the military, and to implement measures to protect all workers, from cafeteria staff to data center employees.

Another petition, titled “Tech demands ICE out of our cities” and initiated by the organization ICEout.tech following Good’s death, highlights a past instance where tech industry leaders reportedly pressured Trump to abandon plans to deploy the National Guard to San Francisco in October. Signatories are now urging tech CEOs to exert similar influence. The petition’s three demands are: “Call the White House and demand that ICE leave our cities,” “cancel all company contracts with ICE,” and “speak out publicly against ICE’s violence.” To date, the petition has gathered over 2,000 public signatures from employees at numerous companies, including Palantir, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon, AWS, Apple, Anthropic, OpenAI, Salesforce, LinkedIn, TikTok, Spotify, Figma, Adobe, Mozilla, Stripe, and Block.

“There has been a very perceptible shift in how people are talking about what’s happening,” Lisa Conn, an organizer of the ICEout.tech petition, told The Verge. She detailed tech workers’ growing concerns about ICE tactics and inconsistencies, noting the petition’s rapid spread through Signal groups and WhatsApp chats in recent weeks. Conn added that even business leaders are expressing apprehension about a potential economic crisis stemming from ICE’s actions. “When the government starts killing people on the streets, it’s really bad for business,” she stated, emphasizing, “This is not hypothetical. This is how economies hollow out.”

Despite the overall silence from tech CEOs and a lack of public corporate action, some non-C-suite leaders and staffers have spoken out. Jeff Dean, Google’s chief scientist and Gemini lead, posted on X that Pretti’s killing was “absolutely shameful” and that “every person regardless of political affiliation should be denouncing this.” James Dyett, OpenAI’s head of global business, also posted on X, observing, “There is far more outrage from tech leaders over a wealth tax than masked ICE agents terrorizing communities and executing civilians in the streets. Tells you what you need to know about the values of our industry.”

“Internally, people are really hush-hush,” the YouTube employee reiterated. “They’ve gotten the point that leaders don’t want them to be bringing in the outside world. They want [them] to focus on their narrow definition of the job.” The employee questioned the current state of affairs: “Is it still okay to be an employee in technology right now? Is the future we’re building towards bright, or is it dystopian?” This individual also confirmed that the message from YouTube leadership was “loud and clear”: staffers should remain focused on the company mission.

Another Google employee mentioned feeling that the global situation has been acknowledged in some of the meetings she attended, and she was encouraged by Dean’s public statement. “We’re also a company that’s made up of a lot of immigrants with various statuses,” she explained. “I can imagine being somebody that is here on one of those H-1B visas feeling very vulnerable about talking too much because it’s like we’ve got secret police, it feels like, out in the world.”

The Microsoft Azure employee noted that she and many colleagues openly discussed their anti-ICE stance in person, finding Microsoft’s stated mission — “to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more” — to be fundamentally at odds with the company’s actions. This discrepancy also conflicted, she said, with their original motivations for joining Microsoft.

“I’ve hit my limit of what I’m willing to tolerate,” the Microsoft Azure employee declared. “I already knew that I was uncomfortable with what was happening — I know Microsoft works with ICE, I know GitHub has contracts with ICE and they’ve had those for a long time, and I’ve never been okay with that — but I still try to believe that the good that I’m doing is greater than the horrors that are a part of this. But there’s a limit to what we can put up with. And I’ve hit my limit.”

A second Microsoft employee informed The Verge that internal portals she examined contained no acknowledgment of the situation; all updates appeared to focus on the company’s AI priorities for the year or new chip developments. She stated that within her team and organizational branch, there had been no mention of current events, even in town halls, leading to a feeling that “it feels like there’s no space to talk about it.”

“I’m not surprised, I’m just wildly disappointed,” the second Microsoft employee expressed. “I haven’t been able to think about work very well.” She raised the point that some employees must be located in, or have connections to, Minneapolis. “To not hear anything about how we’re supporting those people, even just a nod to it like, ‘Hey, we have … resources you can reach out to in case of mental health’ … It really has been nothing.”

An employee at medtech giant Abbott, working from an office near Minneapolis, felt supported by her direct manager but observed a complete lack of acknowledgment from higher leadership, including CEO Robert B. Ford. She reported receiving a generic HR email about mental health resources without any reference to the current situation, and noted the absence of a stated protocol for how to proceed if ICE were to appear at the office or their homes. Like other tech workers, she described in-person conversations with trusted colleagues as the primary form of resistance. She also depicted a constant state of hypervigilance and “keeping your head on a swivel,” given the ubiquitous presence of ICE vehicles in the community.

“Based on my experiences here in Minneapolis, I think basically every building, no matter what kind of building you are … should have a plan in place for if ICE is spotted on your property,” the Abbott employee asserted. “I’ve been pretty shocked that there’s not been any communications about, ‘This is our plan on what to do.’ And we have plenty of workers in the building that are people of color, and the experience we know here is they’ll grab US citizens too, so it doesn’t really matter what your citizen status is.”

An employee at CLEAR, which collaborates closely with the Transportation Security Administration at airports, characterized the company culture as “very fear-based” with “a lot of intimidation” and demands to “fall in line and accept and say yes to everything and not really question too much.”

“I don’t necessarily trust that the technology that we have, that the resources we have, will be used for something good,” the employee stated. “I just don’t really believe that having people’s biometrics and access to personal information based off of the way their body moves — I don’t trust that that wouldn’t be used for immigration verification.”

Similar to other workers interviewed by The Verge, the CLEAR employee feared repercussions but deemed leadership’s affinity for the Trump administration and their lack of response not only tone-deaf but potentially dangerous.

CLEAR’s Haaland reiterated in her statement that the company “has one mission: to deliver secure, seamless experiences for our members in airports and beyond. We do that by making data security the highest priority and ensuring our members always maintain complete control of their information.”

“I work at Google; it’s the forefront of AI,” the YouTube employee reflected. “I grew up with the internet being this information superhighway, this tool of empowerment, and this amazing equalizer. Things have been nuanced and not exactly all a utopia, but I continue to believe that technology is empowering. But I see what’s happening with the administration, and all the coziness between tech companies and the administration, and I wonder, ‘What future are we building towards now?’ People are scared about what AI is going to become. The association with Trump — does that mean AI is going to become a tool of state repression? What are we really working on? What is the future that tech is shaping right now?”

The Microsoft Azure employee described many tech workers as wearing a mask, outwardly complying with protocol, but being more honest with trusted colleagues in person. She mentioned discovering a Post-it note, viewed by The Verge, hidden in a meeting room that read, “I feel completely useless here, how ’bout you?”

“I think that speaks to the culture of at least Microsoft, but I think it’s happening at all of the tech companies right now,” she concluded.