Salesforce workers outraged after CEO makes joke about ICE watching them | ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
Salesforce CEO and co-founder Marc Benioff is facing growing criticism following a joke he made about surveillance of international employees by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at a company event.
Employees publicly expressed outrage over Benioff’s comments in his keynote speech at an internal conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday, and executives at Salesforce-owned Slack said he should apologize.
Benioff allegedly asked the international employees to stand up, before joking that ICE agents were present and watching them, drawing boos from the crowd, several employees told media outlets including Wired and 404Media. A recording of his speech posted on an internal Salesforce site was edited to cut out his remarks about ICE, Business Insider reported.
The incident comes as hundreds of Salesforce employees reportedly plan to urge Benioff to denounce ICE and cancel future dealings with the agency, Wired and CNBC reported.
Like other billionaires, Benioff’s politics appear to have taken a sharp turn during Trump’s second term. For years he has been closely aligned with some liberal causes, including a 2018 measure in San Francisco to tax the city’s big businesses to fund homeless services, and in an interview with the Guardian criticized billionaires for “hoarding” their wealth.
Last fall, Benioff told the New York Times that he “fully supported” the president and said Trump should send National Guard troops to San Francisco, before apologizing and walking back those comments. His company, which has long had contracts with ICE, has sought to increase its business with the agency.
He’s now facing outrage within his company and others connected to Salesforce over his recent jokes about international employees, ICE, and a remark about not understanding Bad Bunny’s recent Super Bowl performance. Employees condemned his comments on Slack and LinkedIn.
Farone Rasheed, a Salesforce employee, wrote on the networking site: “I’m afraid for my friends and colleagues on my team who are here on international visas… I’m shocked, angry, sad and frustrated by the views being taken by Salesforce leadership this week. I’m sharing this here because, frankly, I fear retaliation for this.”
Rob Seaman, chief executive of Slack, criticized Benioff’s comments in an internal company message, according to Business Insider.
“I want to acknowledge the jokes that happened this morning at CKO,” Seaman wrote, the outlet reported. “I can’t defend or explain them. They don’t align with my personal values and I know many of you do too.”
Salesforce did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
