Silicon Valley staffers at some of the world’s most valuable companies are among hundreds of technology workers who called on their employers to lobby the White House to withdraw federal immigration agents from U.S. cities in a letter published with more than 200 signatures on Tuesday.
The letter, signed by people who work at companies including Google, Amazon and TikTok, pointed to how tech chief executives helped dissuade President Donald Trump from deploying federal officers to San Francisco in October. It asked CEOs to repeat that effort on behalf of Minneapolis and other cities beset by Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and the resulting protests and violence. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Although signed by only a small minority of the tech workforce, the letter is notable for being one of the first mass demonstrations of opposition in Trump’s second term by an employee base that loudly protested some policies during his first — sometimes with vocal support from tech leaders.
In 2017, Apple, Amazon and others openly contemplated suing the first Trump administration over a ban on visas for travelers from seven countries with Muslim majorities. Google co-founder Sergey Brin joined a demonstration against the policy at the San Francisco airport.
Last year, tech CEOs including Google’s Sundar Pichai and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg were prominent guests at Trump’s second inauguration, and tech companies donated millions to support the construction of a White House ballroom. Trump has formed close alliances with conservative tech figures, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk and investor David Sacks, who serves as the White House AI and crypto czar.
Historically, much of Silicon Valley’s rank and file have been politically to the left of their leaders and quick to protest. Recent layoffs across the industry have dampened employee pushback, said Margaret O’Mara, a tech historian at the University of Washington. “The job market is less tight, and employers are less ready to shift positions in response to employee protest,” she said.
AnnE Diemer, a San Francisco human resources consultant who drafted the letter signed by tech workers, said it is aimed at showing not all in the industry support Trump. “There is such a stereotype that tech is with Trump on this, and there are a lot of tech companies that have contracts with ICE, and I wanted to show that it isn’t all of us,” said Diemer, who previously worked at payments company Stripe. “We have a lot of power as a collective.”
Trump said in November that “friends,” including tech chief executives such as Marc Benioff of business software provider Salesforce, had asked him to hold off from a federal “surge” in San Francisco, contributing to his decision to halt the operation.
The letter signed by tech workers urges “our CEOs to pick up the phone again” to call “the White House and demand that ICE leave our cities.”
Tech leaders should also cancel contracts with the agency and speak out against “ICE’s violence,” the letter says.
The letter has attracted more than 220 signatories in a little over a week, Diemer said. More than 140 made their names and employers public, including six from Google, three from Amazon, and two each from Meta, TikTok and Salesforce. Some hold senior roles, including a chief technology architect at Nokia, a senior vice president at Mozilla and numerous chief executives of smaller companies.
Organizers verified the tech employment of all signatories, some of whom work outside the Bay Area and other U.S. tech capitals. A few work in other countries for American firms.
Silicon Valley companies traditionally have been more responsive to employee sentiment than other corporations. For the past two decades, tech firms have competed fiercely for talent, including with proclamations about making the world a better place.
Immigration policy has long been a major concern of tech executives and their workers. Google, Microsoft and Uber are led by immigrants, and many people across the industry’s ranks were born outside the United States. Although known for an unrepresentative workforce, tech companies embraced diversity initiatives, especially after the Black Lives Matter protests that followed the police killing of George Floyd in 2020.
Tech companies have so far been quieter on those issues since Trump’s return to office. Employees have been less outspoken as layoffs increased after companies over-hired during the covid pandemic and embraced artificial intelligence. Companies rolled back diversity initiatives after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions and the Trump administration attacked such policies.
“A lot of my former colleagues have told me privately that they are really outraged by what is happening, but that they are too afraid that they will lose their jobs if they speak out,” said Pete Warden, an Apple and Google veteran who leads start-up Moonshine AI and signed the letter.
Some tech workers who signed told The Washington Post that they thought company leaders have been holding back from voicing opinions, not because they agree with Trump’s policies but out of fear of retribution. The Justice Department has launched investigations into a number of Trump’s political foes. The president has struck unprecedented deals with tech companies over tariffs and export controls and said he will weigh in on antitrust clearances of major corporate mergers.
Others who signed said they hoped company leaders would heed their appeal, if only because domestic stability is better for business.
“There’s sort of a bigger tent of capitalists who care about the rule of law [and] avoiding the drift into authoritarianism,” said Lisa Conn, who founded a work collaboration start-up and previously worked for Meta, where she fought extremism on Facebook.
“When people are being killed on the streets, business goes to hell, and it takes decades to recover.”
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