Demand Progress

Tell Microsoft to divest from ICE operations!

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    Tell Microsoft to divest from ICE operations!

    Petition to Satya Nadella, chief executive of Microsoft:
    It is time to cancel Microsoft's $19.4 million dollar contract with Immigration, Customs, and Enforcement (ICE). Tech companies have a moral responsibility to ensure that their products are not used to violate human rights.

    Microsoft, specifically the Azure cloud system, contributes to ICE's operations by supporting mail, calendar, messaging, and document management workloads. You have an opportunity to stand with other tech leaders and not only urge the administration to change their policy, but also, to refuse to be complicit in traumatizing families.

    You must cancel Microsoft's contract with ICE immediately.

    The Trump administration's 'zero tolerance' policy has left thousands of children alone in a foreign land, separated from their families and caregivers. The disastrous policy was cruel and inhumane. And there were American companies profiting off of it and continuing to profit off of Trump's xenophobic agenda.

    Microsoft has a $19.4 million dollar contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency responsible for enacting some of Trump's policies. In a January 2018 blog post, Microsoft boasted about how Azure, it's cloud computing services, which can range from hosting a customer’s data to facial recognition, was making the agency more efficient. According to Microsoft's own communications, their product is "mission-critical" to ICE's operations. We demand Microsoft stop enabling ICE's mission to punish families seeking safety.

    In recent days, Microsoft has denied direct involvement "on any projects related to separating children from their families at the border" and has called on the president and Congress to change this disastrous practice of cruelty towards vulnerable children seeking safety. Trump's recent executive order may have halted the traumatic separations and families will soon be detained together, but the deportation industry is still rolling. And corporations, like Microsoft, are still enabling operations.

    We demand more than that from Microsoft. We demand an acknowledgement that Microsoft's products and services are being used as part of Trump's machine. And a part of that machine has forcibly taken children from their families and disappeared them with no clear plan for re-unification.

    Microsoft has a moral responsibility to refuse to uphold contracts that lead to the violation of human rights or at the very least not to turn a profit from a client actively traumatizing children and families.