John,
ICE’s expansion isn’t just a policy failure -- it’s the product of a corrupt feedback loop between federal enforcement agencies and powerful corporations that profit from repression, while the public pays the price.
Major corporations like AT&T, Home Depot, Amazon, Microsoft, and Palantir are deeply embedded in ICE, signing lucrative contracts to provide surveillance tools, cloud computing, data analytics, logistics, and communications infrastructure.
At the same time, these very same companies received massive tax breaks under Trump’s corporate tax law -- worth roughly $19 billion a year -- while their CEOs personally pocketed tax windfalls totaling as much as $124 million. That money didn’t go to workers or lower prices. It went to stock buybacks, executive compensation, and further expanding ICE contracts.
This is mutual back-scratching at its most self-serving: corporations profit from contracts funded by the massive and ever-increasing ICE budget, thanks to the Republicans’ Big Brutal Bill, and ICE grows as corporate vendors come forward with capabilities to supply it. The result is a corporate-executive branch complex that serves oligarchic interests, not the public good.
Send a message to the CEOs of AT&T, Home Depot, Amazon, Microsoft, and Palantir. Tell them to stop profiting from ICE violence and end their collaboration now.
The public is paying twice. First, through lost tax revenue that could have funded SNAP, Medicaid, ADA supports, housing assistance, and ACA subsidies -- many of which have been cut, capped, or allowed to expire. Second, through the human cost of ICE’s unchecked enforcement: aggressive raids, mass surveillance, and overcrowded detention centers.
And now, the violence is spilling into communities. In Minneapolis alone, recent ICE operations resulted in the deaths of two U.S. citizens. Nationally, deaths in ICE detention have reached their highest levels in decades.
These outcomes are the predictable result of dovetailed interests between enforcement agencies seeking more power and corporations seeking more profit. ICE cannot operate without corporate partners. Surveillance software to track people. Cloud platforms to manage data. Communications systems to coordinate raids and detention logistics.
When corporations provide the tools, they are active participants. If these companies withdrew their support, ICE’s capacity to carry out mass enforcement would grind to a halt. The violence is built, financed, and normalized by corporate contracts that convert public suffering into private gain.
Tell major corporate CEOs: End your collaboration with ICE now -- and stop feeding a system that enriches the few by impoverishing the many.
Thank you for calling out the CEOs who profit while ICE’s violence spills out in the streets.
- DFA AF Team
