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Salesforce CEO and co-founder Marc Benioff is facing mounting criticism after joking about US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers monitoring international employees during a company event.
The comments were made during his keynote address at an internal conference in Las Vegas. According to employees who spoke to Wired and 404Media, Benioff asked international employees to stand before joking that ICE agents were present and monitoring them, drawing boos from the audience.
A recording of the speech later posted on an internal Salesforce site was edited to remove the remarks about ICE, Business Insider reported.
Employee backlash and internal dissent
The reaction from staff was swift. Employees publicly expressed outrage over the comments, posting criticism on Slack and LinkedIn.
Farone Rasheed, a Salesforce employee, wrote on LinkedIn: “I am fearful for my friends and co-workers on my team who are here on international visas … I am shocked, angered, sad and frustrated by the views espoused by the leadership at Salesforce this week. I’m sharing this here because, frankly, I fear retaliation for that.”
Leaders at Slack, which Salesforce owns, also addressed the controversy internally. Rob Seaman, Slack’s General Manager, criticized the remarks in a company message, according to Business Insider.
“I want to acknowledge the jokes that happened this morning at CKO,” Seaman wrote. “I cannot defend or explain them. They do not align with my personal values and I know this to be the case for many of you as well.”
Hundreds of Salesforce employees reportedly plan to urge Benioff to denounce ICE and cancel future business with the agency, according to Wired and CNBC.
Political shift and business ties
The controversy comes as Benioff’s political positioning appears to have shifted. For years, he aligned with liberal causes, including supporting a 2018 San Francisco measure to tax large corporations to fund homeless services. In an interview with the Guardian, he criticized billionaires for “hoarding” their wealth.
Last fall, he told the New York Times he “fully supported” the president and said Trump should send national guard troops to San Francisco before later apologizing and walking those comments back.
Salesforce has long held contracts with ICE and has sought to expand its business with the agency.
The backlash over the ICE joke, along with a separate remark about not understanding Bad Bunny’s recent Super Bowl performance, has increased scrutiny of leadership tone and corporate values inside the company.
ICE protests within Google
Meanwhile, more than a thousand Google employees have signed an open letter urging the company to sever its ties with the federal government’s immigration enforcement agencies, commnly known as ICE.
The letter calls for more transparency regarding how Google’s technology is being used by federal agencies. The employees are particularly concerned about Google’s contracts to provide cloud services to federal agencies and its involvement in federal immigration enforcement activities.
"Google is powering this campaign of surveillance, violence, and repression," the letter stated.
The employees said that Google's leadership, including CEO Sundar Pichai, failed to be transparent internally about the company's work with the federal government, prompting employees to issue an open letter demanding greater disclosure.
The letter also urges Google to pull its technology from all work tied to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). In addition, employees are seeking safeguards against immigration enforcement actions, worker safety measures and are calling for an all-hands meeting to address their concerns.
