Big Tech Staff Rally Bosses Against Trump’s ICE Raids

The tech world's support of President Donal Trump has vastly changed between his first and second terms in office.

Employees working at Silicon Valley’s most lucrative tech companies are standing up for change, rallying for their bosses to put pressure on President Donald Trump to withdraw federal U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from major U.S. cities, The Washington Post reports.

In a letter with more than 200 signatures, workers at major tech conglomerates such as Google, Amazon, and TikTok highlighted that their executives and leaders once stopped Trump from deploying federal officers to San Francisco in October 2025. Now they want their CEOs to do the same on behalf of the innocent people of Minneapolis, as ICE raids have resulted in violence and protests.

“We are tech industry professionals in the United States. We all witnessed ICE brutally kill a U.S. citizen on the streets of Minneapolis. Then, the Trump administration brazenly lied about what happened,” the letter reads, according to KRON 4.

“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.”

The letter, signed by employees at Spotify, Uber, and YouTube, has one request of their employers: “Pick up the phone again” to call “the White House and demand that ICE leave our cities.”

Much has changed in the tech world in regards to standing—or not—with Trump. A majority of companies opposed his administration’s policies during his first term, but not this time.

Leaders have been silent on issues like immigration, an unrepresentative workforce, and diversity initiatives, which were heavily supported following the police killing of George Floyd in 2020. Amazon, Apple and other tech giants once projected legal action against the first Trump administration over the controversial Muslim travel ban.

Some of those same leaders were present for Trump’s 2025 inauguration, standing behind the 47th president and Vice President JD Vance, who seemingly got his start in politics with support from venture capitalist Peter Thiel and entrepreneur David Sacks.

Employees have also dialed back their objections. “A lot of my former colleagues have told me privately that they are really outraged by what is happening, but that they are too afraid that they will lose their jobs if they speak out,” Pete Warden, a veteran Google and Apple employee and leader of Moonshine AI start-up who signed the letter, said.

The signees also want CEOs to cancel contracts with ICE and speak out against “ICE’s violence.” Anne Diemer, a HR consultant from San Francisco who curated the letter, said there is more power in numbers and that tech world has done this before.

“There is a stereotype that tech is with Trump on this, and there are a lot of tech companies that have contracts with ICE, and I wanted to show that it isn’t all of us,” Diemer said. “We have a lot of power as a collective.”

Other experts feel bad politics equals the chance for a company to fail. America saw what happened after megaretailer Target withdrew its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

“There’s sort of a bigger tent of capitalists who care about the rule of law [and] avoiding the drift into authoritarianism,” Lisa Conn, who started a work collaboration start-up after fighting extremism on Facebook while working for Meta.

“When people are being killed on the streets, business goes to hell, and it takes decades to recover.”