Leaked email from GitHub CEO shows the company will renew its $200K contract with ICE, despite stated opposition to child separation policies
Even though GitHub leadership and others oppose ICE's child separation policy, an internal email suggests GitHub won't stop ICE from renewing a contract with the tech company.
VICE
Context & Ripple Effects
This renewal extends a pattern that started with GitHub's parent: in 2018, [[a:930708|Microsoft pulled its ICE work reference from its site after the child-separation backlash, only to restore it once pressed]]. GitHub's $200K renewal, revealed in a leaked CEO email, shows the subsidiary following the same playbook — public statements of dismay paired with continued business.
The leak lands amid rising employee anger, and the corpus shows where it goes: a month later GitHub [[a:947409|doubled down internally, arguing cancellation could hurt the immigrants the company wants to help]]. The 2021 Slack leak over a firing shows internal dissent kept finding its way out.
First-order effects
ICE retains its $200K GitHub contract, and GitHub leadership must defend the renewal to its own workforce, whose opposition is documented in the leaked email and subsequent coverage.
Second-order effects
Microsoft inherits the brand exposure: its subsidiary's ICE ties keep the parent's 2018 retraction-and-restore cycle alive, and GitHub's November memo sets the internal template for answering employee protests with mission-framed justifications.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, stated corporate values and government contract revenue stay structurally separate at Microsoft-owned properties, with leaked internal communications becoming the recurring accountability mechanism employees use.
The trend: Developer platforms under Microsoft are decoupling public values statements from government contract decisions, leaving employee leaks as the main check on that gap.
Someone just sent this to @fightfortheftr. An internal email showing that @github, which is now owned by @Microsoft recently renewed a $200,000 contract with ICE. Full email here: https://drive.google.com/... pic.twitter.com/Ut4JACEYlY
These parts jumped out at me: “The revenue from the purchase is less than $200,000 and not financially material for our company.” “GitHub has no visibility into how this software is being used” Write GitHub senior management ... as if that somehow makes it okay?
Fun fact: GitHub has an entire department devoted to securing government contracts. I'm 100% sure that the dev friends you have there had no idea about this, either. https://twitter.com/...
Github is renewing its ICE contract despite the company leadership's *own position* against child separations at the border. it justifies this by basically saying “ICE does other things too”—but simultaneously admits it has no control over how the software is used 🙃 pic.twitter.c…
Ugh, @github is working with ice and the letter from @natfriedman amounts to, “but but but we protest and donate to charity so surely it's ok if we have a *tiny* $200k contract with ICE.” Githubbers, it's your turn to say fuck-no. We've got your backs.
Before it pivots back to a variety of fairly tortured excuses and justifications, culminating in the classic: “Our voice is heard better by policymakers when we have a seat at the table.”
New: internal email obtained by Motherboard shows GitHub plans to renew a contract with ICE. Email also tweeted by activists. Renewal is for an enterprise server license. CEO says disagrees with immigration policy, but ICE also combats cybercrime etc https://www.vice.com/...
.@github, we're deeply disappointed to hear you are profiting from an agency who has done such harm to our community. To the workers at Github: please don't sit on the fence. We're asking you on behalf of all the immigrants ICE has terrorized to protest the hell out of this. http…