As Minneapolis residents gathered at snowy vigils Saturday night to mourn the death of a neighbor shot by federal immigration agents, tech industry leaders including Apple chief executive Tim Cook and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy joined President Donald Trump at a White House screening of a documentary about first lady Melania Trump, according to Instagram photos from the event and the Hollywood Reporter.
Their attendance at the screening stood in stark contrast to public statements from some notable tech workers, who called for Americans and the tech industry to publicly denounce the violent consequences of Trump’s immigration policy. The posts were part of an outpouring of frustration from Silicon Valley figures over Alex Pretti’s death that included high-ranking employees at Google, Microsoft and OpenAI. (The Washington Post has a content partnership with OpenAI.)
“This is absolutely shameful,” Google’s chief scientist, Jeff Dean, posted on X on Saturday alongside a video of the shooting, hours after Pretti’s death. “… Every person regardless of political affiliation should be denouncing this.”
James Dyett, an executive at OpenAI, wrote on X soon after that his industry appeared to have its priorities wrong. “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 a proposed tax on billionaires that conservative venture capitalists have vociferously opposed.
On Monday, as pressure to acknowledge the tragedy continued, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told his staff in an internal message that ICE “is going too far.”
“There is a big difference between deporting violent criminals and what’s happening now, and we need to get the distinction right,” Altman said, according to a copy of the message obtained by The Post. “President Trump is a very strong leader, and I hope he will rise to this moment and unite the country.”
Altman has previously appeared with Trump at the White House for announcements related to AI, and OpenAI President Greg Brockman became a top Trump backer with a $25 million donation in September. The company declined to comment on the record.
What’s going on in Minnesota is pretty beyond the pale. If state and federal officials don’t figure out how to climb down from this level of violence and provocation, the wound in our national unity will be hard to recover from. Everyone needs to recalibrate their approach.
— Joshua Achiam (@jachiam0) January 24, 2026
The outcry from tech figures in recent days suggested a rupture may be underway in Silicon Valley, which has so far shied away from repeating the political dissent by workers and leaders seen under Trump’s first term. Chief executives and other influential figures in the industry have drawn closer to the White House and a recent wave of layoffs have made lower-ranking tech workers more cautious.
The killing in Minneapolis briefly revived tech’s liberal voice — and exposed a public gulf between the posts by executives such as Dean and Dyett and the silence of their employers and CEOs.
The fatal shooting also gave fresh momentum to a public letter signed by more than 200 tech workers last week that demanded tech companies cancel their contracts with federal immigration agencies. The letter has gained hundreds of signatories since Saturday and now lists more than 700, according to William Fitzgerald, a former Google employee and founder of the Worker Agency, a PR firm.
Pete Warden, who worked at Google for seven years after selling his start-up to the tech giant, said he had never been politically outspoken before last week, when he signed the open letter against ICE and spoke with The Post.
“I’ve tried to be very aware of people with different beliefs, and try to find ways to cooperate without bringing politics into it,” he said. “But at this point when it’s about people getting murdered in broad daylight on the streets, that’s what’s really driven me to speak out.”
As a successful founder, Warden said he is familiar with the “delicate” role personal networks can play in successfully raising capital or closing deals in Silicon Valley. “The effect of having some very powerful and influential people at the top of the industry really being aggressive about supporting Trump makes it very hard … to come out and publicly talk about this.”
Apple’s Cook did not respond to a request for comment on this story, nor did Amazon’s Jassy, whose company reportedly spent $40 million to produce the film. The movie was directed by Brett Ratner, who was accused by six women of sexual harassment and misconduct in 2017 but has denied the claims. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
During Trump’s first term, Cook and leaders at Google, Amazon and Uber openly criticized the president’s immigration policy against countries with Muslim majorities. Google co-founder Sergey Brin joined a demonstration at San Francisco International Airport alongside Silicon Valley rank and file. Tech companies publicly condemned the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020 and introduced a raft of new diversity initiatives.
In Trump’s second term, tech leaders have, by contrast, been prominent partners in Trump’s policy and political initiatives. Silicon Valley companies have donated millions to his inauguration fund and White House ballroom project, industry figures have taken roles in his administration, and venture capitalists have forcefully promoted his agenda in X posts and podcasts.
But in the days since Pretti’s killing in Minneapolis, high-ranking tech workers publicly criticized the administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement. The pushback came from prominent start-up founders and influential employees of firms such as Google and OpenAI, some of whom had previously avoided disclosing their politics.
Dean, Google’s chief scientist, was among the first to speak up after Pretti’s death on Saturday. Others who soon followed included former Andreessen Horowitz venture capitalist John O’Farrell, Google Director of Product Kath Korevec, AI start-up Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah and former Meta executive Yann LeCun, who captioned a video of the shooting: “M U R D E R E R S.”
Wondering how the eager tech enablers of this regime, including some of my former VC friends and partners, are rationalizing this atrocity. Just the latest in a year of horrors. Is all the crypto and AI money in the world really worth this? https://t.co/X7GxHQiVjw
— John O’Farrell (@johnofa) January 25, 2026
Americus Reed, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, said American corporations are in an unprecedented position, having to navigate an administration with a record of targeting companies it perceives as enemies.
The public response to events such as the killings of Pretti and Renée Good, and the unpopularity of Trump’s policies on issues such as immigration and the economy, can leave companies trapped. “When I heard that Tim Cook was at the Melania documentary” that evening, “it’s shocking,” Reed said.
Companies are trying not to get “burned” by the Trump administration, he said, but must “be careful because consumer memory is long.”
Target and other major corporations based in Minnesota experienced their own backlash after attempting to acknowledge the weekend’s tragedy. An open letter released on Sunday that was signed by more than 60 companies in the state urged “deesclation of tensions” and asked “state, local and federal officials to work together” but did not mention Trump or ICE.
It triggered criticism online from state residents who accused the companies of being out of touch with Minnesotans. Katherine Blauvelt, a Minneapolis resident, called the letter a “nothingburger” that was “gut-wrenching” to read.
“These companies tout what great community members they are. You’ve got their logos on all our stadiums and around town,” she said. “If a mom with a whistle can stand up to ICE, why can’t you?” she added, referring to how people in Minneapolis have worked to warn residents when immigration agents are nearby.
However disappointing to some, Neil Saunders, managing director of retail analytics firm GlobalData, said the careful tone of corporate statements make business sense. “Retailers are not there to be political campaigning vehicles,” he said. “They are there to sell things to consumers of all persuasions.”
As the cracks in the tech industry’s political alliances deepened in recent days, even close colleagues found themselves on the opposite side of the political divide.
Venture capitalist Keith Rabois, managing director at the influential Silicon Valley firm Khosla Ventures, on Sunday replied to a post on X questioning federal tactics in Minneapolis claiming that “no law enforcement has shot an innocent person. illegals are committing violent crimes everyday.”
Ethan Choi, a partner at Khosla, responded on Sunday: “I want to make it clear that Keith doesn’t represent everyone’s views here,” Choi wrote. “What happened in Minnesota is plain wrong. Don’t know how you could really see it differently.”
On Monday the firm’s founder, Vinod Khosla, weighed in with his own post. “I agree with” Choi, he wrote. “There is politics but humanity should transcend that.”
I agree with @EthanChoi7 . Macho ICE vigilantes running amuck empowered by a conscious-less administration. The video was sickening to watch and the storytelling without facts or with invented fictitious facts by authorities almost unimaginable in a civilized society. ICE… https://t.co/ASvjZQB0Gg
— Vinod Khosla (@vkhosla) January 26, 2026
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