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Amazon Powers ICE. Its Workers Aren't Happy. (Mother Jones)
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/05/amazon-powers-ice-its-workers-arent-happy/https://nonogra.ph/amazon-powers-ice-its-workers-arent-happy-05-01-2026
Warehouse workers, delivery drivers, and software engineers are organizing against America’s deportation machine.
“We will demand the one thing that’s worth fighting for in this life: respect,”worker-organizer Matt Multari said.
Amazon’s Web Services cloud-computing platform is more profitable than all the company’s retail operations combined. And AWS sells cloud-computing services to clients throughout the American government, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement: According to Forbes reporting, ICE spent at least $25 million on AWS during the second Trump administration. Amazon Web Services also holds contracts with Palantir, the surveillance-tech company behind much of ICE’s deportation operation. (And Amazon has served as an inspiration for ICE, too: acting ICE director Todd Lyons has said he wants deportations in the US to run “like Amazon Prime for human beings.”)
That’s part of why, at Monday’s rally, non-union tech workers stood alongside unionized warehouse workers.
Zelda Montes, a former software engineer at Google who was fired in 2024 for holding a sit-in with their coworkers, said they’ve spent much of the past two years trying to help organize tech workers at places like Amazon. With the group No Tech for Apartheid, Montes works to build power within tech companies against the contracts that Amazon and Google hold with the Israeli government. “For a lot of tech workers, the work that they’re doing is helping to create these systems of surveillance that affect warehouse workers, that affect delivery workers, that create more difficult working conditions for them,” Montes said. “So it’s really important for us to be able to unite with them on the labor front.”
snip
At some Amazon warehouses, more than half of workers are immigrants. But Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has shown no interest in walking back the company’s contracts with agencies targeting those immigrants. “Amazon’s abuse of workers bankrolls their ability to do this,” said Sultana Hossain, an organizer with Amazon Labor Union. So, workers in New York told Mother Jones, they’re going to keep fighting.
That’s part of why, at Monday’s rally, non-union tech workers stood alongside unionized warehouse workers.
Zelda Montes, a former software engineer at Google who was fired in 2024 for holding a sit-in with their coworkers, said they’ve spent much of the past two years trying to help organize tech workers at places like Amazon. With the group No Tech for Apartheid, Montes works to build power within tech companies against the contracts that Amazon and Google hold with the Israeli government. “For a lot of tech workers, the work that they’re doing is helping to create these systems of surveillance that affect warehouse workers, that affect delivery workers, that create more difficult working conditions for them,” Montes said. “So it’s really important for us to be able to unite with them on the labor front.”
snip
At some Amazon warehouses, more than half of workers are immigrants. But Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has shown no interest in walking back the company’s contracts with agencies targeting those immigrants. “Amazon’s abuse of workers bankrolls their ability to do this,” said Sultana Hossain, an organizer with Amazon Labor Union. So, workers in New York told Mother Jones, they’re going to keep fighting.