The Trump administration’s approach to immigration has reached a level of violence that the tech industry cannot ignore. In 2026 until now, federal immigration agents have killed at least eight peopleincluding at least two US citizens in Minneapolis — Renee Good and Alex Pretti. As immigration enforcement grows more severe – even keeping children out of school seeking legal asylum – tech workers are calling on their leaders to speak out.

The tech industry has always been entangled in politics. Companies like Palantir, Clearview AI, Flock, and Paragon contracted by US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and assist in agency crackdowns. But with President Trump taking office last year, his industry connections have grown. Elon Musk has been running a government agency for months, and prolific Silicon Valley investor David Sacks is leading a technology advisory board for the president. The CEOs behind some of the country’s biggest companies — such as Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Apple’s Tim Cook, and Google’s Sundar Pichai — had prime seats at Trump’s inauguration and remain allies of him.

“We know our industry leaders have leverage: in October, they persuaded Trump to cancel a planned ICE raid on San Francisco,” ICEout.techa group of tech industry workers opposed to ICE, wrote in a statement on January 24, the day of the ICU nurse Alex Prettydeath of. “Major tech CEOs are at the White House tonight,” the statement added, referring to a screening of a documentary about Melania Trump in which cookAndy Jassy of Amazon, and Eric Yuan of Zoom were in attendance. “Now they need to go ahead, and join us in demanding ICE from all our cities.”

Some of the biggest players in technology have ever spoken, to mixed reception from their employees and the industry. Below, we’ve kept an ongoing list of what technology leaders are saying.

Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn

LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, a major Democratic donor, published a editorial in the San Francisco Standard on January 29, called on Silicon Valley to stop trying to be neutral in the wake of the Minnesota killings.

“We in Silicon Valley cannot bend the knee to Trump,” Hoffman wrote. “We can’t stand back and just hope the crisis goes away. We know now that hoping for no action is not a strategy — it’s an invitation for Trump to trample on anything he sees, including our own business and security interests.”

He said he was encouraged to see so many technology leaders speak, saying: “This is a great start to something that America needs right now.”

“Whichever candidates you may have supported in the past — or even if (like many of my friends in Silicon Valley) you don’t normally do politics — you really don’t want to. IT,” he wrote.

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has opposed by the public Trump’s policies in his first term, but his tone has changed in the new administration because his company has agreed to develop AI infrastructure for the US government, including a whopping $500 billion. Stargate project.

In the days following Pretti’s death, Altman spoke to OpenAI staff in an internal Slack message, which reported by The New York Times.

“What happened with ICE went too far. There’s a big difference between deporting violent criminals and what’s happening now, and we need to get the difference,” he said. “President Trump is a very strong leader, and I hope he rises to this moment and unites the country.”

Altman added, “We didn’t become super woke when it was popular, we didn’t start talking about masculine corporate energy when it was popular, and we don’t make a lot of performance statements now about safety or politics or anything else.

Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic

In an interview with NBC, anchor Tom Llamas asked Dario Amodei about his views on defense in relation to current events. Anchor points out that Anthropic has a contract with the US Department of Defense, and it has partnered with Palantir — which provides technology to ICE — on projects for that agency.

First, Amodei reaffirmed that Anthropic does not have any contracts with ICE, despite its relationship with the Department of Defense, and emphasized his concern about “the need to protect democracies against autocracies” like China and Russia.

“I’m a big believer in, cautiously, with guardrails, arming democracies to defend these countries,” Amodei said, adding that these values ​​continue in the context of America’s internal politics.

“We have to be really careful about making sure that democracies are worth protecting. We have to protect our own democratic values ​​at home,” he said. “I guess some of the things we’ve seen the last few days have me concerned about that.”

He also discussed the ICE raids in Minneapolis in a post at X, where he referred to “the fear we saw in Minnesota.”

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple

The CEO of Apple addressed the staff at a internal memo on January 27:

“It’s time for deescalation,” Cook said. He later added, “I had a good conversation with the president this week where I shared my views, and I appreciate his openness to engage on issues that matter to everyone.”

Meredith Whittaker, president of Signal

Like the tech industry workers behind ICEout.tech, Signal President Meredith Whittaker is tight-lipped about the role of tech leaders in social justice.

“I want everyone in tech who always talks about freedom, or their love of privacy, or their commitment to freedom, to join me in a clear condemnation,” Whittaker WRITES in X.

In another post, he said, “Masked agents of the US state are killing people in the streets and powerful leaders are blatantly lying to cover them up. To everyone in my industry who claims to value freedom—take the courage of your convictions and take a stand.”

As an end-to-end-encrypted messaging app, Signal is often used by activists to organize community actions.

Tony Stubblebine, CEO of Medium

The leader of the online publishing platform Medium, Tony Stubblebine posted screenshots of Threads of a MESSAGES he shared with the staff where he explained his reasoning for allowing employees to participate in a general strike across the country if they choose, though he made it clear he’s “not in the business of dictating people’s politics.”

“I started the week with my own head and heart about what I saw in Minneapolis and really struggled with the idea that those two murders were just the tip of the iceberg of wrongdoing,” Stubblebine wrote.

In the memo, he wrote about the difficulty of navigating his role as a tech CEO during this time, saying it felt “awkward to navigate both the mission and on-money.” He added that he thought about the company’s “responsibility to explain (its) stance, especially since many other tech orgs have donated to the Trump campaign and support the current administration’s agenda.”

Stubblebine also pointed out that Medium’s approach to its role as a web publisher reflects the company’s broader values ​​— “for example, we don’t allow things like hateful content or racist slurs on Medium.”

Jeff Dean, chief scientist at Google DeepMind

Jeff Dean talks about his reaction to the murders in Minnesota.

“This is absolutely embarrassing,” Dean WRITES in X, responding to a video of federal agents shooting Alex Pretti. “Agents of a federal agency don’t need to step up, and then kill a defenseless citizen whose offense appears to be using his cell phone camera.

James Dettet, OpenAI’s head of global business

James Dyett at X posted what he sees as hypocrisy in the tech industry.

“There is more outrage from tech leaders about the wealth tax than masked ICE agents terrorizing communities and killing civilians in the streets,” Dett SAYS. “Tells you what you need to know about the values ​​of our industry.”

Keith Rabois, Ethan Choi, and Vinod Khosla, partners at Khosla Ventures

While Khosla Ventures partner Keith Rabois has publicly expressed support for ICE and the Trump administration’s practices, others at the firm have publicly opposed these views.

Rabois made inflammatory comments at X after border patrol agents killed ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, prompting a founder of ANSWERS that if he were a founder of the Khosla Ventures portfolio, he would return the money, calling Rabois “a disgrace.”

Ethan Choi, another partner at Khosla Ventures, ANSWERED in the post to explain that not everyone in the company agrees with Rabois’ views. “I want to make it clear that Keith does not represent the views of everyone here at (Khosla Ventures), at least not mine,” Choi WRITESadded: “What happened in Minnesota is so wrong. You don’t know how you can see it differently. It’s sad to see someone’s life taken needlessly.”

Vinod Khosla, the company’s founder, reposted Choi’s message and called federal agents “macho ICE vigilantes running amok empowered by an unconscious administration.”

“The video is painful to watch and the story telling without facts or with invented fictitious facts by the authorities is almost unthinkable in a civilized society,” Khosla WRITES. “ICE personnel must have ice water running through their veins to treat other people this way. There is politics but humanity must rise above that.”

Khosla also posted on X that he agrees with Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, that more tech executives should speak out against the Trump administration.