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More than 800 Its employees and contractors Google I signed a petition this week demanding that the company disclose and cancel any contracts it may have with it US immigration authorities. The workers said in a statement that they “strongly oppose” Google’s dealings with the Department of Homeland Security, which include… Immigration and customs (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
“We consider it the ethical and policy responsibility of our leadership to disclose all contracts and collaborations with CBP and ICE, and to withdraw from these partnerships,” the petition published Friday said. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
US immigration authorities have been under intense public scrutiny this year as the Trump administration intensifies its mass deportation campaign, sparking nationwide protests. In Minneapolis, Confrontations Confrontations between protesters and federal agents culminated in the killing of two American citizens at the hands of immigration officers. Both incidents were arrested at Viral videos It became a focal point of backlash. In the wake of the uproar, the Trump administration and Congress said they were negotiating changes to ICE’s tactics.
Some of the Department of Homeland Security’s most lucrative contracts are for programming and Technology equipment From a variety of different vendors. A small percentage of workers at some of these suppliers, including Google, Amazon and Palantir, have raised concerns for years about whether the technology they develop is being used for surveillance or to carry out violent acts.
In 2019, there were approximately 1,500 workers at Google I signed a petition They called on the tech giant to suspend its work with Customs and Border Protection until the agency stops engaging in what they said are human rights violations. And more recently, employees of Google’s AI unit He asked the executives To explain how they would prevent ICE from raiding their offices. (No answers were immediately provided to the workers.)
Employees at Palantir have also recently raised questions internally about the company’s work with ICE, WIRED reported. And more 1000 people Companies across the tech industry signed a letter last month urging companies to ditch the agency.
Tech companies have largely defended their work for the federal government or pushed back on the idea that they help it in troubling ways. Some government contracts are executed through intermediaries, making it difficult for workers to determine which tools the agency uses and for what purpose.
The new petition within Google aims to renew pressure on the company to acknowledge, at the very least, recent events and any work it may be doing with immigration authorities. It’s organized by No Tech for Apartheid, a group of Google and Amazon workers who oppose What they describe as technological militarism, or the integration of corporate technology platforms, cloud services and artificial intelligence into military and surveillance systems.
The petition specifically asks Google’s leadership to publicly call on the US government to make urgent changes to immigration enforcement methods and to have an internal discussion with workers about the principles they consider when deciding to sell technology to state authorities. It also calls on Google to take additional steps to keep its workforce safe, noting that immigration agents recently targeted an area near a Meta data center under construction.