Salesforce tries to help ICE boost its immigration force

SAN FRANCISCO - Mr Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, shocked San Franciscans last week when he said that he “fully supports” US President Donald Trump and wants National Guard troops deployed to their city.

But his allegiance to Mr Trump goes much further.

Screenshots of internal documents and communications obtained by The New York Times show that Salesforce has pitched Immigration and Customs Enforcement on using the company’s artificial intelligence capabilities to help ICE staff up as Mr Trump expands immigration raids and deportations around the country.

Mr Benioff’s support of the National Guard ran counter to the city’s famously liberal underpinnings and to his own reputation as a benefactor of progressive causes.

San Francisco leaders, already outraged by those remarks, were upset to learn on Oct 16 that the homegrown company was trying to help Mr Trump with his immigration crackdown.

The internal documents include a five-page memo sent on Aug 26 that explained how Salesforce is best suited to help the agency with “talent acquisition” to achieve its goal “to nearly triple its work force by hiring 10,000 new officers and agents expeditiously.”

Other Salesforce documents included a spreadsheet of ICE “opportunities,” the company’s term for possible contracts, as well as an internal brainstorming slide deck about how artificial intelligence agents might help ICE evaluate information sent to the agency’s tip line and improve investigations.

The internal information was provided to the Times by an individual with ties to Salesforce who was granted anonymity because the person was not authorised to share it.

The Times described the documents to Salesforce, and the company did not dispute their authenticity.

Mr Benioff declined to comment publicly for this article, and a Salesforce spokesperson said the company does not discuss contracts.

The company said in a statement that it has served the US government under many administrations and that all of its customers are bound by company policies to use its products responsibly.

Salesforce, which also contracted with ICE under the Obama and Biden administrations, is far from the only tech company helping ICE drastically expand its enforcement efforts under Mr Trump.

Palantir, the Denver-based software company co-founded by conservative billionaire Peter Thiel, is a major partner of ICE. Microsoft and IBM also have contracts with the agency.

Tech leaders have increasingly catered to Mr Trump in 2025, from giving him gifts in the Oval Office to joining him at state dinners, as Mr Benioff did in England in September.

Critics have suggested that the executives are well aware that Mr Trump can help their companies thrive – or try to punish them in various ways.

Salesforce relies heavily on federal contracts and is looking to expand that business line.

Mr Benioff said in an earnings call on Sept 4 that the US government is “our largest and most important customer” and that its contracts across numerous departments are worth billions to the company.

He cited the US Army, US Coast Guard and the Veterans Affairs Administration among the agencies that use Salesforce products.

“But we’re starting to expand what we do even more,” he said.

Deep in the company’s most recent earnings report is an acknowledgment of the risks of relying on government contracts.

Politicians could change their policies, or budgets could dry up. And some partnerships might hurt the company’s image.

“Our relationships with certain government entities may result in negative publicity or reputational harm,” the earnings report states.

Salesforce is in various stages of trying to sign new ICE contracts, with some already completed, according to the spreadsheet tracking business possibilities with the agency.

The Aug 26 memo, a response to a request for information issued by ICE, explained how Salesforce is an “ideal platform” to modernise ICE’s hiring process and “implement an aggressive, high-yield marketing strategy” to reach recruits.

Salesforce can help ICE, it says, “identify, engage and acquire the talent profile proven to drive ICE mission success, and in turn, administration priorities.”

San Francisco leaders were surprised on Oct 16 to learn that one of the city’s signature tech companies, with a rocket-shaped skyscraper that defines the city’s modern skyline, was working on software that could help the Trump administration expand its immigration enforcement efforts.

Mr Danny Sauter, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, said it was more proof that Mr Benioff is “straying farther and farther from San Francisco values.”

Mr Sauter said that as a sanctuary city, San Francisco aims to protect immigrants in the country illegally who have not committed crimes, not round them up.

“For someone to claim that they support San Francisco and then be embedded with ICE like this is deeply concerning,” he said.

Mr Scott Wiener, a Democratic state senator who represents the city, said on Oct 16, “It’s completely unacceptable for any San Francisco company to help ICE scale up so that it can deploy more secret police to terrorise people in American neighbourhoods.”

At his annual Dreamforce conference in downtown San Francisco this week, Mr Benioff hyped the company’s “agentic enterprise,” a business model that uses AI agents that can help companies work more efficiently, with little human intervention.

At the Moscone Centre, where the conference was held, it was sunshine and rainbows – literally.

The decor included brightly coloured cartoon characters and a human-made waterfall, and Mr Benioff preached unity.

“I want to put all of our political situations aside, all of our divisiveness, and just come together as one ohana right now,” he said from the stage, using the Hawaiian word for family.

(Mr Benioff has principally lived on the Big Island of Hawaii with his actual family for the past five years.)

In an infomercial-style presentation from a circular stage, Mr Benioff touted everyday uses for his AI agents.

He talked with an executive from Williams Sonoma about how AI could help people plan their holiday menus and generate shopping lists, and with a leader from the jeweller Pandora about how it could help sell charm bracelets.

There was no mention of its applications for immigration enforcement.

The company’s ICE Slack channel included chatter about Salesforce employees attending a Border Security Expo in April with the hopes of meeting Mr Tom Homan, Mr Trump’s border czar, to “applaud him on his efforts.”

On Sept 9, Salesforce staff met with Mr Rob Thorne, the chief information security officer for ICE, and employees discussed in Slack how using AI to help ICE process its detainees represented a huge opportunity for Salesforce.

Mr Benioff has faced criticism for immigration-related Salesforce contracts before.

In 2018, when the first Trump administration was separating families at the border, Salesforce employees and immigration activists pressured Mr Benioff to cancel his company’s contract with US Customs and Border Protection.

Salesforce did not cancel it, but Mr Benioff did offer US$250,000 (S$323,270) to the Refugee and Immigrant Centre for Education and Legal Services.

Mr Jonathan Ryan, an immigration attorney who was the centre’s executive director at the time, rejected the money, calling it dirty.

A Salesforce spokesperson did not comment on Oct 16 on the matter.

Mr Ryan said in an interview this week from his home in Texas that he was not surprised that Salesforce was trying to win contracts with ICE in 2025.

He felt that Mr Benioff was like the vast majority of business leaders, motivated primarily by money.

He said Mr Benioff told him, in a phone call from Hawaii back in 2018, that he would visit Texas to see the family separation crisis up close.

He never heard from Mr Benioff again. NYTIMES.