On Saturday afternoon, more than 70 people protesting the Trump administration’s horrific immigration policies—and Microsoft’s complicity—were arrested during a sit-in outside of a Microsoft store on Fifth Avenue in New York City.
Why Microsoft? Close the Camps NYC, the group that organized this protest, explained they were demonstrating there because Microsoft works with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. What do protesters want? In this case, for Microsoft to stop allowing ICE to use its technology.
You might remember this group from August when about 100 people were arrested while protesting ICE on Manhattan’s West Side Highway, which involved closing all lanes of traffic.
This is far from the first time Microsoft has been criticized for its cooperation with ICE. For example, over 100 Microsoft employees signed a letter asking the tech company to stop working with ICE last year. Microsoft’s contracts with ICE, by the way, total in the multi-millions.
Microsoft told CNN in a statement that it was “grateful to the NYPD for their help with protestors” and that it had closed that location “for the rest of the day.”
The NYPD “helped,” by the way, by arresting 76 protesters. They were arrested, technically, for blocking traffic near the store. According to the police, there were 50 women and 26 men arrested.
“By knowingly and willingly providing technology support to ICE, Microsoft Corporation is colluding with ICE and its racist mission to tear apart families, and mistreat children” Andy Ratto, an organizer with Close the Camps, said in a statement as reported by HuffPost. “This is a moment of life-or-death for 11 million undocumented people in the United States, and we will not remain silent as American corporations profitteer from―and enable―human suffering.”
Here are some videos and images from the protest:
In June, Microsoft President Brad Smith sent a statement where he talked about immigration and the company’s policies, in which he said, among other things, that Microsoft is "something akin to 'the United Nations of Software.'" Not exactly an apology.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella gave a statement on
LinkedIn in June, noting, "I want to be clear: Microsoft is not working with the U.S. government on any projects related to separating children from their families at the border. Our current cloud engagement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is supporting legacy mail, calendar, messaging and document management workloads." No more splitting words—any support of ICE is disturbing. Complicit is complicit.