Google executives are currently facing considerable pressure from their workforce regarding the company’s involvement with the federal government’s immigration enforcement efforts. These efforts have, in recent months, been associated with violent and deadly incidents.
An open letter, published on a Friday, saw nearly 900 full-time Google employees demand increased transparency concerning the applications of the company’s technology within the US government.
Google holds contracts to supply federal agencies with cloud services and is also connected to work supporting federal immigration enforcement.
Following the letter’s publication, a Google employee with seven years of tenure expressed his astonishment that the company continues its relationships with immigration enforcement bodies.
This letter from Google employees follows another letter released two weeks prior. That letter was signed by hundreds of workers from various tech companies, including Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta, advocating for all tech firms to cease their support for the federal immigration crackdown.
Over the past year, the Trump administration intensified its program for the forced removal of immigrants. This involved deploying armed agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) into several cities.
Operations related to these removals led to two high-profile killings of US citizens who were observing federal agents.
A Google employee, identified as Alex, who is at the forefront of these demands to management, stated he joined the company seven years ago.
“I was proud to be working at a company with a moral compass. I’m not proud anymore,” he remarked.
In 2018, Google, under pressure from thousands of its employees, terminated a contract with the Pentagon known as Project Maven. This project aimed to develop more efficient drone technology for the US military.
Alex further expressed that he finds it “abhorrent” to come to work daily, knowing his efforts might be supporting federal agents within the Department for Homeland Security (DHS), ICE, and CBP, or contributing to the removal of applications deemed “threatening” by authorities.
In October, Google announced it had removed several apps from its app store that allowed users to report and document sightings of ICE agents. Apple also took similar action.
Another Google employee, identified as “S”, who joined the company approximately three years ago, stated that had she known about its work with federal agencies at the time, she would not have applied.
“This is not the company I signed up to work for – I would have never interviewed to work for a military contractor,” she asserted.
Both Alex and S indicated that they are speaking out now against Google’s work with federal agencies due to their objection to their labor contributing to militarized actions against individuals.
They also noted that Google’s leadership, including chief executive Sundar Pichai, has not adequately addressed the full scope of the company’s work with the federal government internally, prompting the open letter demanding greater transparency.
Additional employee demands include that Google withdraw its technology from any work within DHS, ICE, and CBP, provide its workers with protection from immigration enforcement activities, and hold an all-hands meeting to discuss their concerns.
Beyond Google’s cloud services for parts of the federal government, the company last year formed partnerships with Lockheed Martin, a major military contractor, to integrate Gemini AI models into unspecified products and services.
Google also maintains a partnership with Palantir, a US company that supplies much of the technology and operating systems utilized in operations for DHS, ICE, and CBP, as well as all six branches of the US military.
The employment of Alex, S, and other signatories of the open letter to Google has been verified through their registered work accounts.
A Google spokesperson declined to offer a comment on the matter.
