Employees at Google DeepMind have asked the company’s leadership for plans and policies to keep them “physically safe” from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) while on the company’s premises, according to screenshots of internal messages obtained by WIRED.
On Monday morning, two days after federal agents shot and killed Minneapolis nurse Alex Pretti, a Google DeepMind employee sent the following message in an internal message board for the company’s roughly 3,000-person AI unit:
“US focused question: What is GDM doing to keep us physically safe from ICE? The events of the past week have shown that immigration status, citizenship, or even the law is not a deterrent against detention, violence, or even death from federal operatives.”
It continues: “What kinds of plans and policies are in place to ensure our safety at the office? Coming to and from work? As we have seen, government agency tactics can change and escalate quite rapidly. With offices in many metro areas across the US, are we prepared?”
The message received more than 20 “plus emoji” reactions from Google DeepMind staffers.
By Monday evening, no senior leaders from Google had responded to the message. In fact, Google’s top brass—including CEO Sundar Pichai and DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis—have remained silent on Pretti’s killing even inside the company, sources say.
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The messages show some of the latest divisions forming between AI firms and their employees over the Trump administration’s deployment of federal immigration agents across America. While Silicon Valley CEOs have largely bent the knee to Trump, their employees have started raising concerns internally and externally about the federal government’s actions.
Google DeepMind’s chief scientist, Jeff Dean, has been one of the industry’s most outspoken critics of ICE. In a post on X Sunday, he responded to a video of Pretti’s shooting saying, “This is absolutely shameful.”
Employees at the defense tech firm Palantir have questioned the company’s decision to work with ICE. WIRED previously reported that one Palantir employee wrote in Slack, “In my opinion ICE are the bad guys. I am not proud that the company I enjoy so much working for is part of this.”
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