Unrest in Minneapolis
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A number of companies have found themselves facing questions about their work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement amid the agency’s intense operation in Minnesota.
Ephrat Livni
Reverberations from the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota this month by federal immigration authorities are being felt far beyond the borders of the United States.
Videos of the killings have raised concerns — including internationally — about the role of businesses serving Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
Roland Lescure, the French minister of finance and economy, told lawmakers on Tuesday he was seeking answers from Capgemini, a French consulting and digital services company listed on the Paris stock exchange, whose American subsidiary Capgemini Government Solutions just last month inked a new deal with the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE.
“I am urging Capgemini to shed light, in an extremely transparent manner, on the activities it carries out, on this policy, and no doubt to review the nature of these activities,” he told members of the National Assembly.
The company’s $4.8-million contract for skip tracing services, which help federal law enforcers track down foreign nationals, “for enforcement and removal operations,” drew outsize attention in France after the latest shooting on Saturday. A French corporate watchdog group had reported on the Capgemini subsidiary’s deal last week.
Aiman Ezzat, Capgemini’s chief executive, said in a post on LinkedIn on Sunday that the company’s U.S. arm had long done business with federal agencies. Mr. Ezzat said he had learned of the latest Homeland Security deal from “public sources” and knew little about it because the subsidiary has a separate board and works on classified contracts that are legally shielded from the parent company’s view.
“I have been informed that the independent board of directors has already begun the process of reviewing the content and scope of this contract,” Mr. Ezzat said.
But Mr. Lescure, speaking to lawmakers, said that his response was insufficient and that companies are responsible for knowing about their subsidiaries’ activities. Mr. Lescure did not respond to a request for comment.
In a statement to The New York Times on Thursday, Capgemini reiterated that its subsidiary operates independently and that the broader brand “is unable to access specific information” under U.S. law. It added, “We can clarify that according to the information we have, the contract awarded in December 2025 is not, as of today, being executed.” The company did not immediately respond to questions about what this meant and whether the deal had been canceled or had simply not yet gone into effect.
Capgemini is just one of many companies in the United States and around the globe that have found themselves facing questions from employees, investors and the public in the wake of the intense immigration operation in Minnesota.
Palantir, a data analytics giant, has long been scrutinized over its work with ICE, dating back to the previous Trump administration, and is among the biggest financial beneficiaries of the current federal focus on immigration, along with the consulting firm Deloitte. Alex Karp, Palantir’s chief executive, has vociferously pushed back against the criticism.
Other businesses caught up in the recent firestorm have taken a more conciliatory stance.
“We understand that the conversation around immigration policy and enforcement is particularly heated, and has become much more so over the past few weeks,” a Canadian real estate developer, Jim Pattison Developments, said in a statement this week after facing outrage over its potential sale of a Virginia property slated for use as an ICE processing facility.
The developer, which owns a range of businesses across Canada, said that it had accepted an offer to sell the property to a U.S. government contractor before its intended owner and use were made known, noting that the transaction had not yet been finalized. “We respect that this issue is deeply important to many people,” the company added.
The sale has faced resistance from Virginia — where some local officials have objected to ICE occupying the property — to Vancouver. Niki Sharma, the attorney general of British Columbia, where the real estate development company is based, on Tuesday called on Canadian companies to consider their role in the events unfolding in the United States. And Emily Lowan, who leads the Green Party in the province, led calls for a boycott of the company.
The Ontario-based company Roshel has also faced pressure for a deal with ICE, publicized last month, to rush 20 armored vehicles to the United States to “support agents in the field.” Hootsuite, another Vancouver-based company, is providing social media services to ICE, prompting objectors to plan a protest outside the company’s headquarters on Friday.
Working with government agencies can be lucrative but there can be legal and reputational risks, said Michael Posner, a lawyer and professor of ethics and finance at New York University’s business school.
Though companies may face conflicting demands from the public and some investors over controversial contracts, “I don’t think they can pretend it’s not their problem,” he said.
Ephrat Livni is a Times reporter covering breaking news around the world. She is based in Washington.
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