Salesforce Workers Circulate Open Letter Urging CEO Marc Benioff to Denounce ICE | EUROtoday

Employees at Salesforce are circulating an inside letter to chief govt Marc Benioff calling on him to denounce current actions by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, prohibit the usage of Salesforce software program by immigration brokers, and again federal laws that may considerably reform the company.

The letter particularly cites the “recent killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis” as catalysts, calling them the “devastating indictment of a system that has discarded human decency.” It’s unclear what number of signatories the letter has acquired to this point.

The letter, which has not been reported on beforehand, is being organized amid Salesforce’s annual management kickoff occasion this week in Las Vegas. During an look on the occasion earlier in the present day, Benioff requested worldwide staff to face to thank them for attending. He then joked that ICE brokers had been within the constructing monitoring them, in accordance with present and former Salesforce staff who spoke to WIRED.

Benioff’s remarks sparked rapid backlash amongst staff. “Lots of people are furious,” says one supply, who requested to stay nameless for concern of retaliation. Another supply tells WIRED that the interior pushback in the present day was considerably extra forceful than after Benioff made different controversial feedback final fall supporting President Trump’s name to deploy the National Guard to San Francisco to handle crime.

Salesforce didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark from WIRED. Business Insider and 404 Media beforehand reported on Benioff’s remarks and the response to them inside Salesforce.

“We are deeply troubled by leaked documentation revealing that Salesforce has pitched AI technology to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to help the agency ‘expeditiously’ hire 10,000 new agents and vet tip-line reports,” the letter reads. “Providing ‘Agentforce’ infrastructure to scale a mass deportation agenda that currently detains 66,000 people—73 percent of whom have no criminal record—represents a fundamental betrayal of our commitment to the ethical use of technology.”

The letter argues that Benioff’s voice “carries unique weight in Washington,” pointing to an episode final fall when Trump known as off an ICE deployment in San Francisco after what gave the impression to be outreach from Bay Area tech leaders, together with Benioff and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. It urges Benioff to make use of that affect as a “corporate statesman” to problem a public assertion condemning what it calls ICE’s unconstitutional conduct and to commit Salesforce to clear “red lines” barring the usage of its cloud and AI merchandise for state violence.

Benioff has weighed in on each nationwide and native political points for years. He supported Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016 and later turned probably the most high-profile backers of Proposition C, a failed San Francisco poll measure that may have raised taxes to fund applications to handle homelessness. In 2020, he donated to the first campaigns of some Democratic presidential candidates, together with Kamala Harris.

But since Trump returned to the White House in January, Benioff has signaled higher help for some Republican leaders. In one interview, he stated he strives to remain nonpartisan as a result of he additionally owns Time journal. But he additionally joked that, whereas he declined to contribute to Trump’s inauguration fund instantly, he had “donated” a photograph of the president on the journal’s cowl, which named him its 2024 Person of the Year. “He can use the Time magazine cover for free,” Benioff stated within the interview with Fortune.

Benioff additionally confronted backlash from Salesforce staff final fall when he advised the National Guard ought to be despatched to San Francisco to sort out crime forward of the corporate’s annual convention within the metropolis. He later apologized for the remarks, explaining they stemmed from real issues about security. He later reversed his stance and joined Nvidia’s Huang in asking Trump to chorus from sending troops.