Microsoft Corp. employees are circulating a letter supporting an effort to get its GitHub subsidiary to cancel a contract with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, the latest effort among tech-company staff to influence corporate policy on government work.
The letter reflects concerns that Microsoft’s sales to the agency implicate the software maker in the government’s detention of immigrants. On Wednesday, GitHub employees protested the renewal of a roughly $200,000 contract with ICE after GitHub Chief Executive Officer Nat Friedman released an email defending the decision.
“As the parent company to Github, this contract with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) makes all of us working at Microsoft complicit to the unethical detainment of tens of thousands of immigrants and the various abuses that ICE subjects them to,” read the letter, which was viewed by Bloomberg News. “Through our technology, we've already been contributing to the terrorism of ICE agents on our country's immigrant population. We've been doing so for years.” It then calls on GitHub and Microsoft to cancel the contract.
