United States

Minneapolis, Silicon Valley disengages from Trump

Some business leaders such as Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Alphabet Inc.'s Sundar Pichai remained silent about the ice attacks. US Attorney General Pam Bondi announces the arrest of 16 more Minnesota 'rioters' accused of assaulting federal agents

28 January 2026

4' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

4' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

They have been silent on many initiatives of the Trump administration but now, with due caution, they are speaking out and distancing themselves from the president they have, often silently, supported. Silicon Valley leaders take a stand on the events in Minneapolis, the raids against migrants and the murders by ICE agents of two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, aligns himself with technology workers who have urged the CEOs to take a stronger stance against the violent immigration crackdown in Minneapolis. "What is happening with ICE is going too far," Altman wrote in a memo shared Monday with all employees. "There is a big difference between the deportation of violent criminals and what is happening now, and we need to make the proper distinction."

Who took the position

Before Altman, others took a stand on the violence in Minnesota. The ceo of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, the co-founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of Reddit Inc. Alexis Ohanian, the former head of science of artificial intelligence at Meta, Yann LeCun and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla.

'Murderers,' wrote LeCun, who lives in Paris, commenting on the footage of Pretti's death on Sunday. Ohanian wrote: "ICE shot a man in the back while he was immobilised. We need our leaders to lead de-escalation now." Khosla denounced 'ICE's macho vigilantes running amok without control, supported by an administration without conscience'.

In a post on X, Amodei wrote: 'Given the horror we are witnessing in Minnesota, the emphasis on the importance of preserving democratic values and rights at home is particularly relevant.

Silicon Valley leaders joined a larger group of hundreds of engineers and other tech workers who signed an open letter on ICEout.tech, condemning the violence in Minnesota and calling on industry leaders to "join us in calling on ICE to get out of all our cities.

Tim Cook's internal letter

Twenty-four hours after Altman's words, Apple's CEO Tim Cook also spoke out, in an internal company letter that the Wall Street Journal has come into possession of, and stated that he was 'saddened by the events in Minneapolis' and had privately expressed his concerns to President Trump. "This is a time for de-escalation," Cook wrote, "I believe America is strongest when we live up to our highest ideals, when we treat everyone with dignity and respect, regardless of who they are or where they come from, and when we embrace our common humanity.

The Others

Other business leaders such as Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Alphabet's Sundar Pichai have not publicly expressed their opinion. The ceo of Salesforce, Mark Benioff, published a post on the subject on Monday, but without directly attacking the administration: Benioff posted a Minnesota flag with a heart, along with a message calling for "Peace for all".

Outside of CEO positions, some technology executives have spoken out more explicitly. Jeff Dean, head of science at Google's DeepMind, wrote about Pretti's murder: 'Every person, regardless of political affiliation, should denounce him. An OpenAI staff member specialising in robotics, Bloomberg writes, published a post on US constitutional rights. And Anthropic's co-founder, Chris Olah, said on X that he usually avoids talking politics, 'but recent events - a federal agent killing an ICU nurse seemingly for no reason and without provocation - shake consciences'.

The Explanation of Silence

Some workers in the industry made posts on social media criticising the lack of visible resistance from hi-tech CEOs. The silence is easy to explain. In the first year since Trump's return to the White House, the biggest tech and artificial intelligence companies spent $109 million on lobbying, surpassing $100 million for the first time, according to a Bloomberg News analysis.

Among those who remained silent was Zuckerberg. And Meta protected the Ice agents. The protests against the agents of Ice, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, have in fact moved to Facebook: here, users have started to spread the names of the agency's employees, via links to the 'Ice List' website. But now, as Wired USA reports, on Facebook as well as on Instagram and Threads, links to the portal can no longer be shared, because they contain "content that requires personally identifiable information from others," Meta spokeswoman Andy Stone explained to the media. If you try to post a link to an entry on the site, Facebook shows an error with the reason 'posts that look like spam according to our community guidelines are blocked and cannot be edited'.

The latest arrests

Meanwhile, the iron-fisted policy of ICE agents does not stop. 'Federal agents have arrested 16 Minnesota rioters on charges of assaulting federal law enforcement officers, people who resisted and obstructed our agents. We expect more arrests,' US Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote on social media. 'I've said it before and I'll say it again: nothing will stop President Trump and the Department of Justice from enforcing the law.