Businesses are caught in the middle of ICE activities

Ever since a surge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents descended on Minneapolis, businesses big and small across the city are feeling the effects, and many now find themselves mixed up in the conflict. This tension has ramped up significantly following the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by ICE. But even as reports indicate the agency is partially pulling out of the city, businesses here and in other cities across the U.S. are being forced to reckon with this new normal.

Range of impact

Businesses from “family-run cafes to retail giants” are “increasingly coming into the crosshairs of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign,” said The Associated Press. This pressure has taken on many forms in recent months, from “public pressure for them to speak out against aggressive immigration enforcement” to the businesses themselves becoming targets of ICE raids. In cities where ICE’s presence is strong, places like “hotels, restaurants and other businesses have temporarily closed their doors or stopped accepting reservations.”

And it isn’t just Minnesota. Other blue states are feeling the pressure too. Following a surge of ICE activity in Portland, Maine, businesses in the city are “afraid to attract attention to their establishments, especially when restaurants operated by and primarily serving immigrants have been targets of immigration enforcement,” said the Portland Press Herald. ICE has detained more than 200 people in Maine, according to federal officials, and businesses are trying to reckon with this. Black Owned Maine, a nonprofit for minority business owners in Maine, announced on Facebook that it was taking down its website to protect the privacy of its network.

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But even as ICE appears to be shifting its strategies in the wake of the Minneapolis killings, some business owners say they are still unsettled. ICE is “using my business as a hunting ground,” said Milissa Silva-Diaz, the CEO of a Mexican supermarket in St. Paul, Minnesota, to CNN. “This is not sustainable. It makes you wonder: How do we survive this?”

Their response

Businesses have been on both sides of the issue. While some have criticized ICE, others have worked directly with the agency. This includes AT&T, which was awarded a $90.7 million contract in 2021 to supply ICE with IT infrastructure. A reupping of the contract through 2032 could increase its value to $165 million. Other companies working with ICE include FedEx, which has a $2.3 million contract with the agency through 2027; Deloitte, which has a $24 million contract through 2027; and Palantir, a Trump-aligned data company that was awarded a $139.3 million contract.

Other companies are walking a finer line. Minnesota is home to 17 major corporations, but they have been “gun-shy about confronting a political issue like this head-on,” said the Los Angeles Times. Target, the second-largest corporation headquartered in the state, has “experienced a front-page blowback from political controversies twice in recent years.”

But across other states, many businesses and “lower-level employees have publicly taken a stand against the ICE crackdowns,” said Modern Retail. Some of the most notable action has come from the tech industry. A petition released this month, signed by more than 400 employees from companies like Google, Amazon and Meta, urges tech CEOs to join their workers in “demanding ICE out of all of our cities.”