Thomson Reuters U.S. staff urge company to end immigration enforcement contract

The Minnesota Star Tribune and The New York Times said the staff had urged Thomson Reuters to drop the $22.8 million contract when it expires in May.

ICE has aggressively pursued President Donald Trump’s detention and expulsion of undocumented migrants in the United States, including in a massive surge into Minnesota’s largest city Minneapolis, where ICE agents shot and killed two protesters in January.

The news reports said staff at the Thomson Reuters Westlaw subsidiary on the outskirts of Minneapolis wrote to the company after learning that another subsidiary, Thomson Reuters Special Services, was providing ICE with software to pull public and private information about individuals, and to track vehicle license plates to assist with the agency’s dragnet operations.

“We have experienced our neighbors, friends and family members undergoing arrests and detention, intimidation and harassment, and public violence,” the letter said, according to the Times. The letter said staff “question if our investigative products and services are being used in accordance with our mission and values, as well as in accordance with the law and our nation’s Constitution.”

The report quoted a Thomson Reuters spokeswoman as saying in a statement that the company worked with customers “to support investigations into areas of national security and public safety.” The statement continued: “We remain committed to this mission while maintaining strong safeguards that ensure our products and services are used in accordance with our contractual terms and applicable law.”

According to the reports, Thomson Reuters shut down comments about the contract on an internal communications platform used by the company’s 27,000 employees, prompting the Minnesota employees to move their online conversation to the secure app Signal. ■