Kamal Ghorui
Almost 1,000 Google employees have signed an open letter demanding that the company cut ties with the US Department of Homeland Security due to the Donald Trump administration. The petition cites Google contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection CBP), and alleges that the company’s technology is being used to power “state violence and repression”.The employees are demanding an immediate Q&A session regarding Google’s Homeland Security and military contracts, and are seeking disclosure of the company’s ties and “red lines” around use of its products for what they call ‘state violence’ and ‘repression’. Calling more employees to sign the letter, it says, “Once we have enough signers, we will send the petition to leadership and try to get a company-wide response.” As to who these employees are, the petition says: We are Google workers affiliated with No Tech for Apartheid that are fed up with watching our leadership betray our coworkers and our values, and want to stand together with you to demand accountability.
Here’s the open letter titled: Googlers Demand: Worker Safety & ICE Contract Transparency
We are Google workers appalled by the violence inflicted by United States Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs & Border Protection (CBP). In cities across the country we have witnessed these agencies conducting paramilitary-style raids, kidnapping hundreds of civilians, and murdering protestors and legal observers. Just in the last month, Keith Porter, Renee Good, and Alex Pretti have been murdered by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agencies ICE and CBP. ICE’s detention & deportation machine has killed at least 35 people in detention centers since July 2025.Google is powering this campaign of surveillance, violence, and repression. Cloud is helping to stitch together CBP surveillance systems along the border and nationwide, while also powering Palantir’s ImmigrationOS system that ICE uses to track immigrants. Google generative AI is being used by DHS and CBP for “workforce enablement” and “improving operational efficiency”. The Play Store has blocked the most effective ICE tracking apps for keeping our communities safe. YouTube has been running ICE recruitment and “self-deport” ads. As the workers who provide the foundational labor in building this technology, we are horrified.On January 11, Google Chief Scientist Jeff Dean tweeted, “We all bear a collective responsibility to speak up and not be silent when we see things like the events of the last week.” We agree. In that spirit, we are speaking up today as Googlers.We are vehemently opposed to Google’s partnerships with DHS, CBP, and ICE. We consider it our leadership’s ethical and policy-bound responsibility to disclose all contracts and collaboration with CBP and ICE, and to divest from these partnerships. Toward this end, we demand the following of our executives:1. Acknowledge the danger and violence that workers face each day. In the cities they have targeted, ICE and CBP agents are creating humanitarian emergencies that rival COVID-era conditions. We need proportional community responses like school shutdowns and mutual aid networks. Just as Google did during the pandemic, we demand leadership acknowledge the danger facing all U.S.-based workers, and to publicly call for urgent government responses to this crisis.2. Host an emergency Q&A session for workers regarding our DHS, CBP, and military contracts. Leadership responses to employee questions about our contracts with the U.S. government and military have been vague and inconsistent, further obscured by AI summaries that wash out key points of the constituent Ask submissions. We demand a U.S.-based, live, and recorded Q&A session / employee town hall with relevant leadership to field top questions from employees, without any AI summarization or question-collapsing.3. Protect all Googlers — from cafeteria workers to data center employees. The threat ICE poses to Googlers demands that leadership provide material employee assistance. We demand leadership implement appropriate worker safety measures to meet this moment, such as flexible WFH policies and legal and immigration support, for all workers. This is especially important for those with fewer protections, such as TVCs, onsite staff, and data center workers. ICE agents have already visited our buildings. Our leadership must commit to keeping all Googlers safe.4. Disclose ties and declare red lines around use of our products for state violence and repression. Googlers want transparency. We demand precise clarity about admissible applications of our Cloud and AI technology, and transparency and full disclosure about how DHS agencies like CBP and ICE are abusing our products.Through its ICE operations, DHS is violating civil and national law as well as civil and human rights. We must end our complicity in powering them. As workers of conscience, we demand that our leadership end our backslide into contracting for governments enacting violence against civilians. Google is now a prominent node in a shameful lineage of private companies profiting from violent state repression. We must use this moment to come together as a Googler community and demand an end to this disgraceful use of our labor.
