Microsoft Slammed for ICE Contract Amid Child Separations

UPDATE 6/19/19: Microsoft's CEO said he opposes the Trump administration's policy of seperating migrant families at the border and called the practice "cruel and abusive." However, he's refraining from canceling the company's contract with federal immigration authorities.

"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," Satya Nadella said in an email to employees on Tuesday. "Our current cloud engagement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is supporting legacy mail, calendar, messaging and document management workloads."

He made the statement as over 100 company employees are demanding that Microsoft drop its contract with ICE, according to The New York Times. The contract is reportedly worth $19.4 million.

"We believe that Microsoft must take an ethical stand, and put children and families above profits," writes a letter from the employees that's been circulating on internal company message boards.

Although Microsoft's CEO made no mention of canceling the contract, he also said: "Any engagement with any government has been and will be guided by our ethics and principles. We will continue to have this dialogue both within our company and with our stakeholders outside."

Original story:

The public outcry over the Trump administration's policy of separating children from their parents at the US border is spilling over to Microsoft, which has a contract with federal immigration authorities.

In January, Microsoft announced that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was using the company's Azure cloud service "for facial recognition and identification" purposes. "We're proud to support this work," the tech giant said at the time.

Now Microsoft is getting slammed for that partnership; the same federal agency has been helping US authorities carry out the separation of families detained at the US-Mexico border. On social media, critics called on Microsoft employees to demand that their employer drop the government contract.

It didn't help that Microsoft bungled its initial response to the controversy. On Monday morning, the company tried to remove mention of its work with the immigration agency, and journalists quickly took note. Microsoft then told Bloomberg the deletion was a "mistake" and that section was restored.

Later in the day, Microsft released a formal statement, which calls on the Trump administration to stop the family separations. "We urge the administration to change its policy and Congress to pass legislation ensuring children are no longer separated from their families," the company said.

Although Microsoft said it was "dismayed" by the forcible separations, the company has yet to provide details about its contract with US immigration authorities, like how the facial-recognition tech is exactly being used.

In its statement, Microsoft merely said the partnerships had nothing to do with separating children from their parents. "And contrary to some speculation, we are not aware of Azure or Azure services being used for this purpose," it said.

Still, the contract poses a PR headache for the company, when its CEO Satya Nadella has previously spoken out against the Trump's administration's stricter policies on immigration. "We also believe in broader immigration opportunities, like the protections for talented and law-abiding young people under the Deferred Access for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Program, often called 'Dreamers,'" he wrote in January 2017.

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