In the wake of the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis, internal unrest is once again bubbling to the surface inside Google, as hundreds of employees demand the tech giant distance itself from immigration enforcement agencies.
According to internal communications, Google’s message boards lit up after the shooting, with employees pressuring company leadership to respond. By Friday, more than 800 workers had signed a petition urging management to be transparent about how Google’s technology supports federal immigration agencies and to sever business ties with those organizations altogether.
The petition accused immigration authorities of carrying out “paramilitary-style raids” and said employees were “appalled by the violence.” Signatories claimed Google’s tools were being used to assist those operations and called on the company to take responsibility. They also demanded additional safety measures for employees following a reported attempt by agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to enter Google’s campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The petition marks a resurgence of employee activism at Google and across Silicon Valley after several relatively quiet years. During that time, tech workers largely stayed on the sidelines as company executives built closer relationships with the Trump administration. Now, some employees appear eager to push corporate leadership to challenge White House policies.
Although the petition represents only a small fraction of Google’s roughly 190,000 employees, it echoes earlier internal upheaval. In 2018, workers staged a mass walkout over the company’s handling of sexual harassment and later protested Google’s involvement in a Pentagon artificial intelligence program tied to drone operations.
In response to those earlier protests, Google leadership moved to rein in internal dissent. Management restricted access to internal documents, scaled back companywide meetings, and disciplined outspoken employees. Two years ago, the company fired 28 workers who protested its cloud computing contract with the Israeli government.
Those actions, critics say, made some employees more reluctant to speak out. Still, others insist the company’s long-standing ethical culture remains intact. Matthew Tschiegg, a cloud computing engineer who signed the petition, said many workers still believe in Google’s once-prominent corporate motto, “Don’t be evil,” even if it is no longer officially emphasized.
“They’ve scratched or scrubbed that motto, but the ethos lives deep,” said Tschiegg, who has worked at the company for more than a decade.
Since President Donald Trump returned to the White House, prominent Silicon Valley figures — including Elon Musk, Tim Cook, and Mark Zuckerberg — have publicly aligned themselves with the administration through donations and policy commitments. That shift fueled perceptions that the tech industry had moved rightward.
Pretti’s death, however, exposed fractures in that alignment. Following the shooting, several tech leaders publicly urged the administration to reduce the presence of federal agents. Google CEO Sundar Pichai has not issued a public statement, though Jeff Dean, chief scientist at Google’s DeepMind AI lab, wrote on social media that people of all political affiliations should condemn the incident.
The immigration petition, organized by the activist group No Tech for Apartheid, gained more than 500 signatures within its first 24 hours. The group has previously opposed Google and Amazon’s joint cloud computing contract with the Israeli government.
The petition links to reporting that Google provides cloud services to Customs and Border Protection and highlights the company’s partnership with Palantir, a data firm that develops immigration tracking software. Google responded by stating that the Department of Homeland Security accesses only commercially available cloud services through its customers.
Still, employees like Tschiegg say there is little clarity about how Google’s technology is ultimately used. The petition calls for a formal question-and-answer session with management and transparency over whether the company will permit government use of artificial intelligence.
“It seems like they’re chasing the money,” Tschiegg said. “It creates a moral and ethical dilemma.”
