Salesforce employees press CEO to reevaluate contract with border patrol

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Salesforce employees press CEO to reevaluate contract with border patrol
By Ali Breland - 06/25/18 06:53 PM EDT


Hundreds of Salesforce employees are putting pressure on company leadership to reevaluate its contract with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) amid the increased focus on President Trump's hardline immigration policies.

Workers at the cloud computing company sent a letter to CEO Marc Benioff, urging him to “re-examine” Salesforce’s relationship with the CBP and to “speak out against its practices.”

The workers said that they were particularly concerned about Salesforce tools aiding the agency’s involvement in the separation of children from families at the border.

“We cannot cede responsibility for the use of the technology we create–particularly when we have reason to believe that it is being used to aid practices so irreconcilable to our values,” the workers wrote in their letter first reported by Bloomberg and confirmed by The Hill.

According to a release from March, Salesforce is helping CBP "modernize its recruiting process" and "manage border activities."

They noted that even though President Trump signed an executive order ending the practice, they still took issue with the CBP contract.

“We recognize the explicit policy of separating children at the border has been stopped, but that simply returns us to a status quo of detaining children with their parents at the border,” they wrote. “We believe it is vital for Salesforce to stand up against both the practice that inspired this letter and any future attempts to merely make this destructive state of affairs more palatable.”

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http://thehill.com/policy/technology/394058-salesforce-employees-put-pressure-on-ceo-to-reevaluate-customs-and-border