Mason Trinka/Getty Images
Google’s rank-and-file are uniting to address its bosses with a collective demand: end ties with US government immigration agencies.
As reported by cnbcOver 1,000 “Googlers” have signed an open letter demanding divestment from partnerships with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
“In cities across the country we have seen these agencies conduct paramilitary-style raids, abducting hundreds of civilians and killing protesters and legal observers.” reads the letter.
The letter lists several Google products and systems that are being used to carry out a “campaign of surveillance, violence, and repression.” These include the cloud, which is the backbone of CBP’s national surveillance network, the Google Play Store, which is blocking ICE tracking apps, and YouTube, which runs ICE ads that encourage immigrants to “self-deport.”
“As workers who provide the foundational labor in the creation of this technology, we are horrified,” the letter reads. “We strongly oppose Google’s partnerships with DHS, CBP, and ICE. We consider it our leadership’s moral and policy-bound responsibility to disclose all contracts and collaborations with CBP and ICE and divest from these partnerships.”
Overall there are four demands: Google leadership publicly acknowledge the threat of federal agents to all American workers, answer employees’ questions about unclear contracts with government agencies, institute employee safety measures at all Google campuses, and establish “red lines” around what contracts are allowed in the future.
While 1,000 employees is a small number compared to Google’s global workforce of approximately 183,000, an organized group of workers who disagree could cause a massive problem. obstructions For the operation of the company. This exposes the major rift between Google’s financial interests and its quoted price – Exposing how the drive to extract profits from government contracts has trumped the company’s once-vaunted ethics, not to mention the principles of its rank-and-file.
There is also a practical concern. Google is a giant company that makes most of its money from advertising, so eliminating a few government agencies won’t have much of an impact on its profits. Instead, the cost will likely be political: If Google severed its relationship with ICE and CBP on ethical grounds, it would almost certainly become the target of punitive federal action – antitrust action, regulatory harassment, loss of exclusive contracts – in a conflict that would divide its user base and alienate it. symbiotic relationship With the state.
The ICE contract is not the first time that Google employees have backed out of the company’s military contracts. In 2024, 200 employees are developing Google’s DeepMind signed a letter Called on the company to end its contracts with military organizations and cited the company’s working with israeli army On monitoring and target selection.
And in 2018, Google had more than 3,100 employees Wrote another open letter To oppose Project Maven, a Pentagon program that uses AI to analyze video imagery for more efficient drone strikes.
“We believe Google should not be in the business of war,” they wrote at the time, adding that “in the face of growing fears of biased and weaponized AI, Google is already struggling to maintain the public’s trust.”
More on Google: The Department of Homeland Security is demanding that Google provide information about random critics
