Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff participates in an interview on the World Financial Discussion board in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 21, 2026.
Chris J. Ratcliffe | Bloomberg | Getty Pictures
Over 1,400 Salesforce staff have signed a letter calling on CEO Marc Benioff to drop potential enterprise with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement company, two folks conversant in the trouble informed CNBC.
“We’re deeply troubled by current press studies describing Salesforce pitches of AI expertise to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to assist the company ‘expeditiously’ rent 10,000 new brokers and vet tip-line studies,” the letter reads.
The letter calls on Benioff to cancel “all lively pitches or ‘alternatives’ for ICE enforcement and hiring” and concern a public assertion demanding the elimination of masked brokers in U.S. cities.
The Salesforce worker letter is the most recent instance of tech staff elevating issues in regards to the U.S. company’s use of their corporations’ providers after ICE brokers killed U.S. residents Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota in January.
Earlier on Tuesday, Benioff joked about ICE being current at an worker gathering in Las Vegas, 404 Media reported. The incident led staff to criticize the feedback in an inside Slack discussion board, the 2 folks informed CNBC.
Letter signatories are asking Salesforce to inform staff what sorts of providers it’s offering to ICE and “pause or prohibit infrastructure, AI programs or providers that allow ICE operational scale-up.”
“We’re involved that Salesforce services could also be enabling ICE to broaden recruitment, onboarding and operational capability,” reads a supplementary doc to the letter, which CNBC considered. The doc cited an October New York Instances report saying that Salesforce described its software program as an “ideally suited platform” for ICE agent recruitment in a response to a request for data.
The letter from staff comes at a troublesome time for the corporate. Traders have been involved about the potential for AI fashions hurting the expansion prospects of software program corporations, together with Salesforce. Its inventory is down about 27% to date in 2026. In December, the corporate touted its work with the U.S. authorities and known as for development between 9% and 10% within the present fiscal yr, which might be up barely.
Salesforce didn’t instantly present remark.
The letter from Salesforce staff comes after 900 Google staff requested their firm to divest itself from ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Safety as of final week. Enterprise leaders together with Apple CEO Tim Prepare dinner have additionally decried the habits of ICE brokers in clashes with protesters.
“Workers face actual private {and professional} threat when Salesforce is perceived as enabling ICE, together with reputational hurt, social concentrating on or being misidentified as complicit in actions they oppose,” the complement reads. “On the identical time, staff can’t make knowledgeable selections about their work when the scope, governance and limits of Salesforce’s relationship with ICE are opaque.”
Organizers plan to ship the letter to Benioff by Friday, in accordance with the doc.
The letter credit Benioff for saying in October that he didn’t imagine the Nationwide Guard wanted to deploy to San Francisco, the place Salesforce has its headquarters and holds its annual Dreamforce convention. One week earlier, The New York Instances reported that Benioff supported President Donald Trump’s concept of bringing troops to the town.
In Might, the U.S. Basic Providers Administration mentioned Salesforce supplied reductions on Slack, its crew communication software program, to a slew of presidency companies. Adobe, Microsoft and ServiceNow additionally prolonged value cuts to be used of their software program throughout the U.S. authorities.
In October, Benioff held a dialog with Trump’s synthetic intelligence and cryptocurrency czar, David Sacks, and in November, the Salesforce CEO attended a dinner with the president on the White Home alongside different expertise executives. He posted a photograph of himself with Lawyer Basic Pam Bondi on X.
“Marc, you’ve gotten typically mentioned that ‘enterprise is the best platform for change,'” the letter reads. “Right this moment, that platform should be used to defend our neighbors’ constitutional rights and the protection of our communities.”
