More than 800 Google workers are urging the company to cancel any contracts with ICE and CBP

More than 880 Employees and contractors working for Google signed a petition this week demanding that the company disclose and cancel any contracts it may have with US immigration authorities. In the letter revealed Friday, workers said they “strongly oppose” Google’s dealings with the Department of Homeland Security, which includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

“We object to the technology we build being used to advance state violence around the world,” a Google software engineer, who declined to be named for fear of retaliation, told reporters on Friday.

Another Google employee, Alex, added: “I profit from the suffering of others, which I find abhorrent and I refuse to be a quiet participant in this system.”

Google declined to comment on the petition’s demands. But a company spokesperson, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear for their safety, says the technologies involved are basic computing and data storage available to any customer.

US immigration authorities have been under intense public scrutiny this year as the Trump administration intensifies its mass deportation campaign, sparking nationwide protests. In Minneapolis, confrontations between protesters and federal agents culminated in the killing of two American citizens at the hands of immigration officers. Both incidents were captured in widely circulated videos and became a focal point of the backlash. In the wake of the uproar, the Trump administration and Congress said they were negotiating changes to ICE’s tactics.

Some of the most lucrative contracts DHS has entered into are for software and technical equipment from a variety of different vendors. A small percentage of workers at some of these suppliers, including Google, Amazon and Palantir, have raised concerns for years about whether the technology they develop is being used for surveillance or to carry out violent acts.

In 2019, nearly 1,500 Google workers signed a petition calling on the tech giant to suspend its work with Customs and Border Protection until the agency stopped engaging in what they said were human rights abuses. Recently, employees of Google’s artificial intelligence unit asked executives to explain how they would prevent ICE from raiding their offices. (No answers were immediately provided to the workers.)

Employees at Palantir recently raised questions internally about the company’s work with ICE, WIRED reported. More than 1,000 people in the tech industry signed a letter last month urging companies to get rid of the agency.

Tech companies have largely defended their work for the federal government or pushed back on the idea that they help it in troubling ways. Some government contracts are executed through intermediaries, making it difficult for workers to determine which tools the agency uses and for what purpose.

The new petition within Google aims to renew pressure on the company to acknowledge, at the very least, recent events and any work it may be doing with immigration authorities. It was organized by No Tech for Apartheid, a group of Google and Amazon workers who oppose what they describe as technological militarism, or the integration of corporate technology platforms, cloud services and artificial intelligence into military and surveillance systems.

The petition specifically asks Google’s leadership to publicly call on the US government to make urgent changes to immigration enforcement methods and to have an internal discussion with workers about the principles they consider when deciding to sell technology to state authorities. It also calls on Google to take additional steps to keep its workforce safe, noting that immigration agents recently targeted an area near a Meta data center under construction.

Updated: 2/6/25, 12:00 PM EDT: This story has been updated with comments from two Googlers and a company spokesperson.