Growing Wave of Silicon Valley Workers Condemns ICE as C-Suites Split Over Fear of Trump

After two killings in Minneapolis, a group of employees at Google’s parent company added their voices this week to a growing wave of tech workers speaking out and demanding their industry condemn violence by federal immigration officers, even as many executives who spent the past year cozying up to President Donald Trump remain silent.

The Alphabet Workers Union, which represents roughly 1,400 North American employees, said in a statement on Wednesday that it stands in solidarity with immigrant communities and working people “standing up to ICE terror across the country.”

“While President Donald Trump and parts of his administration have attempted to smear [Renee] Good and [Alex] Pretti as ‘terrorists,’ we all have seen the footage and know the truth: these citizens were executed in broad daylight while protesting mass deportation, an activity protected under the First Amendment,” the statement said.

For much of the second Trump administration, however, such political speech among more progressive rank-and-file tech workers has been chilled as many Silicon Valley leaders have publicly drawn closer to the White House — and as their companies sign lucrative contracts with agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“Even though I don’t directly work on the things that power things like ICE, I feel like I have to stand up and represent and be a force of good where I can,” Alphabet software engineer and AWU member Daniel Freedman said.

He added that many of his colleagues fear Google might fire them for speaking out publicly as the union has. Some employees who protested Google’s $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government and military have since been let go.

Google did not respond to KQED’s request for comment about the AWU statement. According to Freedman and reporting from Wired, Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai and other senior leaders have remained silent, even internally, about the killings in Minneapolis.

That’s not true for every Silicon Valley c-suiter. In contrast to Pichai, for instance, Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote a memo to employees saying he’s “heartbroken” by the events in Minneapolis, but then said he “had a good conversation with the president” and spoke about a need for “deescalation,” mirroring language used by Trump.

Other leaders were never friendly with Trump and don’t appear likely to start being so. Vinod Khosla, one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent venture capitalists, wrote on the social media platform X, “The video was sickening to watch and the storytelling without facts or with invented fictitious facts by authorities almost unimaginable in a civilized society.”

Former Block executive Mike Brock, who now writes the Substack Notes from the Circus, wrote that many tech workers stopped speaking out after the 2024 presidential election because “they understand they’ll lose their job.”

In the wake of the killings in Minnesota, that wary discretion is evaporating in favor of open rage and upset.

Last week, more than 200 Silicon Valley staffers published an open letter urging tech leaders to use their platforms to call for ICE’s removal from U.S. cities. As of this story’s publication, the letter has roughly 1,000 signatories, including employees from Google, Amazon and TikTok — although many declined to list more than their job titles.

“The killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti were a breaking point,” wrote Vanessa Parra of the group that published that letter, ICEOut.Tech. “And, this isn’t one corner of the industry. Signers include engineers, VPs, startup founders, and people at AI labs — many who’ve never been politically active before.”

Industry watchers say there are two key factors reflected in this new agitation among Silicon Valley workers.

“Workers know that many of them and their coworkers could be targets and/or be affected by dramatic changes to the immigration system — including the implementation of new fees and restrictions associated with H1B visas,” UC Irvine law professor Veena Dubal wrote to KQED.

“Perhaps more importantly, it is a collective moral recognition about how their own labor may be contributing to the horrors of family separation, detention, deportation, and recent assaults on protestors,” Dubal said. “The reality is that ICE could not engage in their operations without technologies supplied to them through contracts with Palantir, Amazon, and Microsoft.”

For all the energizing impact of organizing among rank-and-file employees, ICEOut.Tech and the Alphabet Workers Union both call for Silicon Valley leaders to use their political leverage, too.

“When CEOs called the White House in October over the National Guard threat to SF, Trump backed down,” Parra wrote. “We’re asking them to use that access to do the right thing now.”

And it’s not just the groups making those calls.

James Dyett, an executive at OpenAI, chided his peers on X over the weekend. “There is far more outrage from tech leaders over a wealth tax than masked ICE agents terrorizing communities and executing civilians in the streets,” he wrote, referring to California’s proposed tax on billionaires that’s prompted some Silicon Valley tech moguls to publicly warn they’d rather leave the state than pay the tax. “Tells you what you need to know about the values of our industry.”