Employees at the technology and consulting firm Accenture are circulating a petition that urges the company to end a recent contract with the Trump administration to help recruit border patrol agents, according to a Bloomberg report Thursday evening.

A version of the petition viewed by Bloomberg on Wednesday had 47 signatures so far; petitioners have not yet formulated a plan for sharing the document with management. Employees who have signed the petition are reportedly set to ask the company to end a five-year, $297 million contract signed last year, which will help Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) hire 7,500 new staffers, including 5,000 border patrol agents.

“The technology we provide is sold in the name of efficiency, but all we see is technology supercharging inhumane and cruel policies,” the petition reportedly says. “We joined Accenture because we want to work for a company that does good in the world, a company that helps vulnerable immigrants, not facilitates putting them into cages.”

Ina statement emailed to Bloomberg, Accenture spokeswoman Stacey Jones said they welcomed the employees’ feedback and that “an important part of [their] culture is that [they] encourage all our people to have a dialogue about issues that arise in the workplace and beyond.”


The Accenture petition is the latest in a line of employee uprisings at large technology companies whose management have entered into contracts with the Trump administration. In July, Microsoft employees presented management with a petition signed by more than 300,000 people calling on the company to cancel its contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“We demand Microsoft stop enabling ICE’s mission to punish families seeking safety,” the petition, obtained by The New York Times, read.

That same month, employees at Deloitte asked petitioned the company, urging it to end its contracts with ICE and CBP, with employees saying they had “moral objections” to the contract.

“We believe that Deloitte must take a stand against the mistreatment of human beings as a result of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agencies’ continued family separation,” it said, adding that the company “must question how its services and offerings to these agencies contribute to ongoing injustice.”

Doloitte denied, in an email to employees also obtained by the Times, that the contract supported family separation.

A month earlier, in June, employees at Salesforce also urged their management to end contracts with CBP. As a letter signed by more than 650 employees read, “Given the inhumane separation of children from their parents currently taking place at the border, we believe that our core value of Equality is at stake and that Salesforce should re-examine our contractual relationship with CBP and speak out against its practices.”


The series of petitions earlier this year came as the Trump administration instituted its policy of separating families at the border, including, reportedly, even some families seeking asylum who entered the country at official ports of entry. Numerous reports detailed the inhumane and traumatic conditions in which separated family members were held, including detaining children and babies. One mother had her baby taken from her while she was nursing, an attorney told CNN. An estimated 44,000 people are currently being detained by ICE — a record high.

So far, none of the companies petitioned by employees to sever contracts with ICE have done so.