A dead employee who just lost his job is detained by immigration agents

dead ex The employee who lost his job during the May 20 round of layoffs has reportedly been detained before US Immigration and Customs Enforcement In recent days, according to communications within the company reviewed by WIRED.

A current employee posted about the incident on an internal website dead Message board for immigration topics this week. The initial post was flagged as “urgent” and two Meta executives who focus on immigration and employee risk issues were tagged in an attempt to escalate the issue to them.

The current status of the detained worker is unknown.

Meta spokesman Dave Arnold declined to comment on the record. Representatives from ICE and US Department of Homeland Security Comment was not provided in time for publication. It is not clear whether the employee was detained by ICE or another agency.

Internal messages reviewed by WIRED indicate that employees believed their former colleague was being detained in El Paso, Texas, where there is a major border crossing between the United States and Mexico. On the other side is Ciudad Juarez, home to one of the largest US consular offices in the region and a common visa processing destination.

Many international employees work at U.S. technology companies under H-1B visas, which allow companies to hire highly skilled foreign workers. These visas are linked to a specific employer. Workers who get a new job need to amend their immigration papers, sometimes by intentionally leaving and returning to the country.

WIRED was unable to confirm the worker’s nationality or the type of U.S. visa he may have traveled on.

The incident represents a rare, well-known example of a tech worker being held in immigration custody since President Donald Trump launched a dramatically increased enforcement effort across the country early last year, drawing widespread criticism.

In May, dead Cutting nearly 10 percent of its workforceor approximately 8,000 people, as part of its ongoing efforts to make the company more efficient and offset the huge investments it is making in AI infrastructure. Many workers on visas were among those laid off, according to employees familiar with the departures.

A small community of Meta employees The company called for more efforts To protect immigrant employees and contractors at risk of detention or deportation Iceincluding assistance with paying legal fees and allowing workers to avoid offices on days when they fear immigration officials will be in the area. Amid what some employees described as a lack of support from Meta, workers began organizing financial and logistical assistance for colleagues in the United States dealing with immigration issues.

Under the Trump administration, immigration authorities are detaining tens of thousands of people a month, with about 60,000 people in detention centers as of early April, according to Researchers. Technical offices were not a major target of raids. But in January, immigration authorities arrested two workers traveling to the Meta Data Center construction site.