They Don’t Want Their Company’s Surveillance Tool Used by ICE
The size of the contract, in the realm of federal contracts, was not huge: $22.8 million.
But it has shaken employees of Thomson Reuters for two reasons. The government agency is Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the employees’ location is Minnesota.
Thomson Reuters is a $50 billion Toronto-based company that owns the Reuters news service. It also operates a widely used legal research tool, Westlaw, whose operations are based in the suburbs of Minneapolis. Thousands of the company’s employees live there.
Operation Metro Surge, as the government called the influx of thousands of ICE agents to Minneapolis in December, directly affected their lives. One employee said ICE agents had raided his child’s school. Another bought groceries for immigrant neighbors who were afraid to leave their homes. Two had carried whistles to alert community members when ICE agents were spotted.
So when employees learned that the company was providing ICE with investigative software to pull public and private information about individuals, and to track license plates, it felt personal and they mobilized.
Click to continue readingSource: New York Times, March 11, 2026