Meta Cafeteria Workers Did What Execs Won’t: Took on ICE and Won
As immigration officers During a raid on factories and other workplaces across the United States last June, staff at a Meta cafe in Bellevue, Washington, made a pact: They would rally together if the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown affected any of them. In December, the agreement underwent its first test.
As part of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement program, federal authorities arrested Serigne, a Senegalese asylum seeker and brother of dishwasher Abdoul Mbengue. “At first I didn’t know what to do, but we had this community and I told them this news,” Mbengue says through a colleague who translates his French.
A number of cooks, dishwashers and front-of-house staff at the Meta cafe known as Crashpad come from Africa, the Caribbean or Ukraine. Some of them, including Mbengue, are in the United States on temporary authorizations while awaiting the resolution of their asylum or immigration cases. President Donald Trump has sought to restrict temporary protection and the granting of permanent asylum, although some of his directives are being challenged in court.
In December, Mbengue’s colleagues launched a fundraising campaign to finance the legal defense of his brother, who arrived in the United States in 2023 to escape difficult circumstances in Senegal. As cafe workers honored their earlier agreement, word spread in group chats among social and environmental activists from other major tech companies in the region. A longtime software engineer at Amazon, for example, donated $100, then added $500 after learning more about the “nightmare,” he says, speaking anonymously because of the company’s rules regarding media interviews. In total, thousands of dollars were contributed by workers at Meta, Microsoft and Amazon. On February 24, a judge ordered the release of Mbengue’s brother. “He is back thanks to the efforts made,” says Mbengue.
The move shows how activism within the tech industry could shift as big companies become less receptive to worker petitions and refuse to take a public stand against Trump’s policies. A decade ago, thousands of tech workers protested Trump’s immigration bans alongside business executives. Today, workers say they must step up to support their colleagues with financial and administrative assistance that they believe their employers should provide to vulnerable and low-income members of their communities.
In the case of Mbengue’s workplace, he and his more than 200 dining room colleagues in Bellevue and nearby Redmond are employed by the catering company Lavish Roots. Last year, more than 60 percent of them called on Lavish and Meta to respect workers’ rights by forming a union with Unite Here Local 8. More than 5,000 peers nationwide at Microsoft, Google and various Meta offices employed by other restaurant companies have already unionized. But Lavish allegedly campaigned against workers through meetings, flyers, text messages and emails, according to Sarah Jacobson, Unite Here’s organizing director. Union supporters were disciplined, monitored and subjected to new rules making workplace communications more difficult, she says.
Although better wages are a major demand, immigration raids have also fueled unionization among Meta entrepreneurs. In their collective agreements, unionized cafeteria workers at Microsoft, Google and other Meta offices enjoy job protection when they try to renew their work permits. Immigration hearings count as excused leave. “They have security and the ability to live freely,” Mbengue says of his Microsoft counterparts. And procedures also exist at other workplaces when ICE attempts to enter offices.
Workers say it’s a legitimate concern. They allege that on January 29, two agents wearing “DHS” clothing searching for a specific non-Microsoft employee working on the company’s Redmond headquarters campus were turned away at the front desk of the Commons building. Microsoft could not confirm that the visitors were law enforcement.
