More than 1,400 Salesforce employees are demanding CEO Marc Benioff denounce recent actions by ICE agents and cut off business deals with the agency – after he made an off-color joke that immigration officers were monitoring international employees, according to reports.
Benioff sparked backlash at the firm’s annual conference Monday when he joked that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were stationed in the building to keep an eye on international employees, according to Business Insider, 404 Media and Wired.
In a letter first reported by Wired, outraged staffers are now calling on Benioff to ban the use of Salesforce software by ICE officials, support legislation to reform the agency and speak out against the “recent killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.”
The letter – which organizers plan to send to Benioff by Friday – specifically insists that the company’s billionaire founder issues a public statement demanding the removal of masked ICE agents in US cities, according to a CNBC report.
Salesforce did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
“We are deeply troubled by leaked documentation revealing that Salesforce has pitched AI technology to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to help the agency ‘expeditiously’ hire 10,000 new agents and vet tip-line reports,” the letter said, according to Wired.
“Providing ‘Agentforce’ infrastructure to scale a mass deportation agenda that currently detains 66,000 people – 73 percent of whom have no criminal record – represents a fundamental betrayal of our commitment to the ethical use of technology.”
“Lots of people are furious” following Benioff’s off-color joke, a source told Wired.
During his keynote address at the Las Vegas event, Benioff asked international employees to stand to thank them for attending – and then joked that ICE agents were stationed throughout the building to monitor them, according to the report.
Internal backlash at the company is significantly more heated than last year, when Benioff supported President Trump’s idea to send the National Guard into San Francisco to crack down on crime, another source told Wired.
Benioff quickly backtracked on those remarks and joined Nvidia’s Jensen Huang in asking Trump not to send troops to the city. Trump backed off those threats, citing “Great people like Jensen Huang, Marc Benioff” as the reason.
Benioff has historically been an outspoken supporter of Democratic issues and candidates, including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi.
He donated to Kamala Harris’ campaign in 2019.
In 2020, Benioff vowed to swear off politics as the owner of Time magazine.
He later joked that he had “donated” Trump the front cover of the magazine, after the president was named Time’s 2024 Person of the Year.
“He can use the Time magazine cover for free,” Benioff told Fortune magazine in an interview.
Turmoil within the company over Benioff’s stance on ICE comes at an already difficult time for the Salesforce.
Shares in Salesforce and ServiceNow, another software firm, were battered last week as investors grew concerned that artificial intelligence could completely automate their services.
