Preserve your head down. Compartmentalize. Don’t make bother.
That’s what many tech employees are taking their CEOs’ strategic silence to imply, amid an immigration crackdown throughout the US by the Trump administration’s Division of Homeland Safety. Widespread violence by federal brokers has sparked protests in Minneapolis and throughout the nation. One month after an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, and two weeks after Border Patrol brokers shot and killed Alex Pretti, nearly all of tech CEOs have remained tight-lipped. Internally, employees from a number of corporations describe a tradition of silence and worry — and trepidation over what sort of future they’re serving to to construct.
The Verge spoke with tech employees at giants like Microsoft, YouTube, and Google, in addition to tech corporations in particular industries, like biometric verification agency CLEAR and medical gadget / healthcare firm Abbott. Most described the identical feeling of being instructed to stay to the company mission, whether or not outright or not, and feeling fearful for his or her jobs in the event that they have been to stay a toe out of line. Microsoft, Google, and Abbott didn’t present a remark. CLEAR’s chief privateness officer, Lynn Haaland, instructed The Verge in a press release, “We don’t work with ICE and by no means have, full cease.”
Many additionally described an eerie lack of acknowledgment on the town corridor conferences and public messaging from their corporations. Inner boards and messaging platforms on the corporations have been additionally typically devoid of mentions, in addition to numerous posts seen by The Verge on Microsoft’s inner discussion board, Viva Interact. A few of the posts in a political dialogue channel talked about the intensifying protests in Minneapolis, ICE’s actions and victims, and Donald Trump’s administration. Posts in a special channel requested for actionable steerage on what to do in case of ICE detention and which paperwork the corporate recommends individuals perpetually stick with it their individual.
“The dissent I’ve seen is sort of a whisper,” stated one worker who works on Azure at Microsoft, who requested anonymity for worry of retaliation, including that persons are afraid to talk out publicly and undecided who to belief internally. “It’s a fear-based tradition proper now.”
Though federal brokers have killed at least eight people thus far in 2026 and public protests are intensifying, chief executives at corporations like Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, AWS, and OpenAI have stayed radio silent by way of public statements. Privately, Apple CEO Tim Cook dinner and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reportedly despatched internal memos to employees in regards to the state of affairs, each calling for deescalation and expressing their beliefs that President Trump would rise to the event. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei briefly spoke publicly, mentioning in a NBC interview that the corporate doesn’t have contracts with ICE, and he posted on X about “the horror we’re seeing in Minnesota” and “the significance of preserving democratic values and rights at dwelling.”
It’s a far cry from resistance efforts in Large Tech years again. In 2018, Microsoft employees offered management with a petition protesting the corporate’s ICE contracts, signed by about 500 Microsoft workers. That very same 12 months, 1000’s of Google employees efficiently protested the corporate’s “Project Maven” partnership with the Pentagon, together with about 4,000 Googler signatures on a petition. Tech corporations’ responses (or lack thereof) to ICE’s latest actions are additionally a big departure from their statements in 2018, and from their statements and monetary commitments to the Black Lives Matter motion after George Floyd’s homicide in 2020.
In the meantime, most tech leaders have tried to ingratiate themselves with Trump since he resumed workplace, donating to his inauguration fund or the primary pro-Trump super PAC, dining with him on the White Home, and placing out public statements praising the administration’s views on tech and AI. A lot of them have additionally considerably elevated their collaborations with the federal government, both placing out merchandise particularly designed to be used by army, protection, and intelligence businesses — like Anthropic’s Claude Gov or OpenAI’s ChatGPT Gov — or persevering with or increasing their contracts with DHS, ICE, and different businesses centered on the immigration crackdown, resembling Palantir. A grassroots movement aiming to ship a sign to the Trump administration over anti-immigrant actions requires shoppers to boycott Microsoft, Amazon, OpenAI, and extra.
An worker at YouTube, who requested anonymity for worry of retaliation, stated, “I’m personally pissed off that corporations have cozied as much as Trump, instructed their employees to only form of shut up and deal with the mission, and never make any distinctions about what the corporate truly stands for at this second in time. Are you on the aspect of democracy? Are you on the aspect of terrorizing our populace? Are you on the aspect of ripping individuals from their households, arbitrary deportations, arbitrary detentions, a number of deaths by the hands of ICE now? Are you in favor of that? The place do you stand?”
A recent petition signed by greater than 1,000 Google workers dictates calls for for management to acknowledge and “publicly name for pressing authorities responses to this disaster,” for the corporate to host an “emergency Q&A session for employees” concerning Google’s DHS, CBP, and army contracts, and to take steps to guard employees, whether or not they be cafeteria employees or knowledge heart workers.
One other petition that started circulating after Good’s dying — created by the group ICEout.tech and titled “Tech calls for ICE out of our cities” — highlights the truth that when Trump wished to ship the nationwide guard to San Francisco in October, tech business leaders reportedly pressured him into backing off. Petition signatories are calling for tech CEOs to do the identical factor now. The three calls for: “Name the White Home and demand that ICE go away our cities,” “cancel all firm contracts with ICE,” and “converse out publicly towards ICE’s violence.” The petition has garnered greater than 2,000 public signatures up to now, itemizing workers at Palantir, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon, AWS, Apple, Anthropic, OpenAI, Salesforce, LinkedIn, TikTok, Spotify, Figma, Adobe, Mozilla, Stripe, Block, and extra.
“There was a really perceptible shift in how persons are speaking about what’s occurring,” Lisa Conn, one of many organizers of the ICEout.tech petition, stated in an interview with The Verge, detailing tech employees’ issues about ICE ways and discrepancies. She stated the petition began being shared in Sign teams and WhatsApp chats and has unfold shortly in latest weeks, with even enterprise leaders expressing their issues a couple of potential financial disaster stemming from ICE’s actions. “When the federal government begins killing individuals on the streets, it’s actually unhealthy for enterprise,” she stated, including, “This isn’t hypothetical. That is how economies hole out.”
The general lack of tech CEO statements and public motion didn’t cease some non-C-suite leaders and staffers from talking out: Google’s chief scientist and Gemini lead Jeff Dean posted on X that Pretti’s killing was “completely shameful” and that “each individual no matter political affiliation ought to be denouncing this.” OpenAI’s head of world enterprise, James Dyett, posted on X, “There’s way more outrage from tech leaders over a wealth tax than masked ICE brokers terrorizing communities and executing civilians within the streets. Tells you what you could know in regards to the values of our business.”
“Internally, persons are actually hush-hush,” the YouTube worker stated. “They’ve gotten the purpose that leaders don’t need them to be bringing within the outdoors world. They need [them] to deal with their slim definition of the job.” He added, “Is it nonetheless okay to be an worker in know-how proper now? Is the longer term we’re constructing in the direction of brilliant, or is it dystopian?” He additionally stated that the message he’d heard “loud and clear” from YouTube management was that staffers ought to stay centered on the corporate mission.
One other Google worker stated that she feels that the state of the world has been acknowledged in among the conferences she’s attended and that she was heartened to see Dean’s public assertion. “We’re additionally an organization that’s made up of numerous immigrants with numerous statuses,” she stated. “I can think about being any person that’s right here on a type of H-1B visas feeling very susceptible about speaking an excessive amount of as a result of it’s like we’ve bought secret police, it looks like, out on this planet.”
The Microsoft Azure worker stated she and plenty of colleagues had brazenly mentioned their anti-ICE stance in individual and that Microsoft’s acknowledged mission — “to empower each individual and each group on the planet to realize extra” — was utterly at odds with the corporate’s actions. It was additionally at odds, she stated, with why she and her colleagues had joined Microsoft within the first place.
“I’ve hit my restrict of what I’m prepared to tolerate,” the Microsoft Azure worker stated. “I already knew that I used to be uncomfortable with what was occurring — I do know Microsoft works with ICE, I do know GitHub has contracts with ICE they usually’ve had these for a very long time, and I’ve by no means been okay with that — however I nonetheless attempt to consider that the great that I’m doing is larger than the horrors which might be part of this. However there’s a restrict to what we are able to put up with. And I’ve hit my restrict.”
A second Microsoft worker instructed The Verge that inner portals she had combed by way of had zero acknowledgment of the state of affairs, and that each one updates appear to be centered on the corporate’s AI priorities for the 12 months or new chips. She stated inside her crew and her department of the group, there’s been no point out of what’s occurring, even on the town halls, and that “it looks like there’s no house to speak about it.”
“I’m not shocked, I’m simply wildly disillusioned,” the Microsoft worker stated. “I haven’t been ready to consider work very nicely.” She introduced up the truth that some workers should be situated in, or have ties to, Minneapolis. “To not hear something about how we’re supporting these individuals, even only a nod to it like, ‘Hey, we’ve … assets you possibly can attain out to in case of psychological well being’ … It actually has been nothing.”
An worker at medtech large Abbott who works out of one of many firm’s places of work close to Minneapolis stated she’s felt supported by her direct supervisor, however larger up the chain, there’s been no acknowledgement of what’s occurring, together with by CEO Robert B. Ford. She stated employees obtained a generic HR electronic mail about psychological well being assets with no acknowledgment of the state of affairs, and that there’s been no acknowledged protocol for how one can proceed if ICE exhibits up on the workplace or at their dwelling. Like different tech employees, she described in-person workplace conversations with coworkers she trusts as the primary type of resistance in the intervening time. She described a continuing state of hypervigilance and “maintaining your head on a swivel,” since ICE autos are “all over the place” inside the neighborhood.
“Based mostly on my experiences right here in Minneapolis, I feel mainly each constructing, it doesn’t matter what form of constructing you might be … ought to have a plan in place for if ICE is noticed in your property,” the Abbott worker stated. “I’ve been fairly shocked that there’s not been any communications about, ‘That is our plan on what to do.’ And we’ve loads of employees within the constructing which might be individuals of shade, and the expertise we all know right here is that they’ll seize US residents too, so it doesn’t actually matter what your citizen standing is.”
An worker at CLEAR, which works intently in tandem with the Transportation Safety Administration at airports, described the corporate as being “very fear-based” with “numerous intimidation” and calls to “fall in line and settle for and say sure to every little thing and probably not query an excessive amount of.”
“I don’t essentially belief that the know-how that we’ve, that the assets we’ve, will probably be used for one thing good,” the worker stated. “I simply don’t actually consider that having individuals’s biometrics and entry to non-public data primarily based off of the best way their physique strikes — I don’t belief that that wouldn’t be used for immigration verification.”
Like the opposite employees The Verge spoke with, the CLEAR worker was scared of ruffling feathers — however felt management’s affinity for the Trump administration and lack of response was not simply tone-deaf, but additionally probably harmful.
CLEAR’s Haaland stated in her assertion that the corporate “has one mission: to ship safe, seamless experiences for our members in airports and past. We do this by making knowledge safety the very best precedence and making certain our members all the time preserve full management of their data.”
“I work at Google; it’s the forefront of AI,” the YouTube worker stated. “I grew up with the web being this data superhighway, this software of empowerment, and this wonderful equalizer. Issues have been nuanced and never precisely all a utopia, however I proceed to consider that know-how is empowering. However I see what’s occurring with the administration, and all of the coziness between tech corporations and the administration, and I ponder, ‘What future are we constructing in the direction of now?’ Persons are scared about what AI goes to grow to be. The affiliation with Trump — does that imply AI goes to grow to be a software of state repression? What are we actually engaged on? What’s the future that tech is shaping proper now?”
The Microsoft Azure worker stated she looks like numerous tech employees are sporting a masks, smiling and going together with the protocol, however that in individual, they are often extra sincere with people who they belief within the workplace. She stated she discovered a Submit-it observe — which was seen by The Verge — hidden in a gathering room that learn, “I really feel utterly ineffective right here, how ’bout you?”
“I feel that speaks to the tradition of no less than Microsoft, however I feel it’s occurring at all the tech corporations proper now,” she stated.
