Tech workers call for CEOs to speak up against ICE after the killing of Alex Pretti

Summary

More than 450 tech workers from companies like Google, Meta, OpenAI, Amazon, and Salesforce have signed a letter urging their CEOs to call the White House and demand that United States Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) leave U.S. cities. “For months now, Trump has sent federal agents to our cities to criminalize us, our neighbors, friends, colleagues, and family members,” reads the open letter from IceOut.Tech. “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.” 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. 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. “This cannot continue, and we know the tech industry can make a difference,” the letter from tech industry workers continues. “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.” The campaign among tech workers began after ICE agents shot and killed U.S. citizen Renee Good in Minneapolis three weeks ago, and it grew over the weekend after Border Patrol agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital. The organizers of the letter did not disclose their names, and many who signed the letter did so anonymously out of fear of retribution. TechCrunch has reached out for more information. A number of tech leaders have already spoken out against federal actions in Minneapolis. LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman said the way ICE operates is “terrible for the people,” and Khosla Ventures founder Vinod Khosla called the current enforcement “mach...