{"id":47489,"date":"2026-01-14T23:26:24","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T23:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/?p=47489"},"modified":"2026-01-14T23:26:24","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T23:26:24","slug":"backlash-against-ice-policing-tactics-grows-in-silicon-valley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/2026\/01\/14\/backlash-against-ice-policing-tactics-grows-in-silicon-valley\/","title":{"rendered":"Tech Workers Are Condemning ICE Even as Their CEOs Stay Quiet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <script data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\" async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-1669381584671856\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- Africa tv video display -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-1669381584671856\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"3579572842\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\r\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins>\r\n<script data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\">\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><span class=\"lead-in-text-callout\">Since Donald Trump<\/span> returned to the White House last January, the biggest names in tech have mostly fallen in line with the new regime, attending dinners with officials, heaping praise upon the administration, presenting the president with lavish gifts, and pleading for Trump\u2019s permission to sell their products to China. It\u2019s been mostly business as usual for Silicon Valley over the past year, even as the administration ignored a wide range of constitutional norms and attempted to slap arbitrary fees on everything from chip exports to worker visas for high-skilled immigrants employed by tech firms.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">But after an ICE agent shot and killed an unarmed US citizen, Renee Nicole Good, in broad daylight in Minneapolis last week, a number of tech leaders have begun publicly speaking out about the Trump administration\u2019s tactics. This includes prominent researchers at Google and Anthropic, who have denounced the killing as calloused and immoral. The most wealthy and powerful tech CEOs are still staying silent as ICE floods America\u2019s streets, but now some researchers and engineers working for them have chosen to break rank.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">More than 150 tech workers have so far signed a petition asking for their company CEOs to call the White House, demand that ICE leave US cities, and speak out publicly against the agency\u2019s recent violence. Anne Diemer, a human resources consultant and former Stripe employee who organized the petition, says that workers at Meta, Google, Amazon, OpenAI, TikTok, Spotify, Salesforce, Linkedin, and Rippling are among those who have signed. The group plans to make the list public once they reach 200 signatories.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">\u201cI think so many tech folks have felt like they can\u2019t speak up,\u201d Diemer told WIRED. \u201cI want tech leaders to call the country\u2019s leaders and condemn ICE\u2019s actions, but even if this helps people find their people and take a small part in fighting fascism, then that\u2019s cool, too.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Nikhil Thorat, an engineer at Anthropic, said in a lengthy post on X that Good\u2019s killing had \u201cstirred something\u201d in him. \u201cA mother was gunned down in the street by ICE, and the government doesn\u2019t even have the decency to perform a scripted condolence,\u201d he wrote. Thorat added that the moral foundation of modern society is \u201cinfected, and is festering,\u201d and the country is living through a \u201ccosplay\u201d of Nazi Germany, a time when people also stayed silent out of fear.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Jonathan Frankle, chief AI scientist at Databricks, added a \u201c+1\u201d to Thorat\u2019s post. Shrisha Radhakrishna, chief technology and chief product officer of real estate platform Opendoor, replied that what happened to Good is \u201cnot normal. It&#8217;s immoral. The speed at which the administration is moving to dehumanize a mother is terrifying.\u201d Other users who identified themselves as employees at OpenAI and Anthropic also responded in support of Thorat.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Shortly after Good was shot, Jeff Dean, an early Google employee and University of Minnesota graduate who is now the chief scientist at Google DeepMind and Google Research, began re-sharing posts with his 400,000 X followers criticizing the Trump administration\u2019s immigration tactics, including one outlining circumstances in which deadly force isn\u2019t justified for police officers interacting with moving vehicles.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">He then weighed in himself. \u201cThis is completely not okay, and we can&#8217;t become numb to repeated instances of illegal and unconstitutional action by government agencies,\u201d Dean wrote in an X post on January 10. \u201cThe recent days have been horrific.\u201d He linked to a video of a teenager\u2014identified as a US citizen\u2014being violently arrested at a Target in Richfield, Minnesota.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">In response to US Vice President JD Vance\u2019s assertion on X that Good was trying to run over the ICE agent with her vehicle, Aaron Levie, the CEO of the cloud storage company Box, replied, \u201cWhy is he shooting after he\u2019s fully out of harm\u2019s way (2nd and 3rd shot)? Why doesn\u2019t he just move away from the vehicle instead of standing in front of it?\u201d He added a screenshot of a Justice Department webpage outlining best practices for law enforcement officers interacting with suspects in moving vehicles.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script async defer src=\"https:\/\/platform.instagram.com\/en_US\/embeds.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><script data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\" async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-1669381584671856\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- Africa tv video display -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-1669381584671856\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"3579572842\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\r\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins>\r\n<script data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\">\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script><br \/>\n#Tech #Workers #Condemning #ICE #CEOs #Stay #Quiet<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since Donald Trump returned to the White House last January, the biggest names in tech have mostly fallen in line&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47490,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mzansi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47489"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47491,"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47489\/revisions\/47491"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}