Grassroots Immigrant Solidarity Fills the Gap Left by Big Tech Inaction on Trump-Era Immigration Policies
When U.S. immigration agents carried out a wave of workplace raids across the country last June, food service staff at a Meta café in Bellevue, Washington, made a quiet pact: If any of them or their loved ones were impacted by the Trump administration’s harsh immigration crackdown, they would stand together to support one another. That promise faced its first real test just six months later, in December.
Under a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement enforcement program, federal authorities detained Serigne, a Senegalese asylum seeker and the brother of Meta café dishwasher Abdoul Mbengue. “At first I had no idea what to do, but we built this community, so I shared the news with everyone,” Mbengue says through a coworker translating his French.
A large share of Crashpad’s (the Meta café’s name) cooks, dishwashers, and front-of-house staff hail from African nations, the Caribbean, or Ukraine. Many, Mbengue included, reside in the U.S. on temporary status while waiting for their asylum or immigration cases to be resolved. Former President Donald Trump has pushed aggressively to roll back temporary protections and restrict access to permanent asylum, though many of his policy directives are currently tied up in court challenges.
In December, Mbengue’s coworkers launched a fundraising campaign to cover legal fees for his brother, who arrived in the U.S. in 2023 to flee dangerous conditions in Senegal. As the café workers honored their earlier agreement, word of the effort spread through group chats used by social and environmental activists at other major regional tech firms. For example, a long-tenured Amazon software engineer donated an initial $100, then added an extra $500 after learning more about what he calls the family’s “nightmare.” He requested anonymity due to company rules governing media interviews. All told, thousands of dollars poured in from workers across Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon. On February 24, a judge ordered Serigne released from detention. “He is home free because of all their work,” Mbengue says.
This grassroots effort highlights a shifting landscape for activism within the tech industry, as large corporations have grown less responsive to worker petitions and increasingly reluctant to take public stances opposing Trump administration policies. A decade ago, thousands of tech workers protested Trump’s early immigration bans alongside company executives. Today, workers say they are forced to fill the gap themselves, providing the financial and logistical support to vulnerable immigrant colleagues that they believe their employers should extend to lower-income, at-risk members of their work communities.
For Mbengue and his team, employment is structured through a third party: he and more than 200 dining staff across Bellevue and nearby Redmond work for catering contractor Lavish Roots, which services Meta. Last year, more than 60% of these workers asked Lavish Roots and Meta to respect their right to form a union with Unite Here Local 8. Already, over 5,000 catering workers across the U.S. at Microsoft, Google, and other Meta locations have unionized. But according to Unite Here organizing director Sarah Jacobson, Lavish Roots has run an aggressive anti-union campaign, using one-on-one meetings, flyers, texts, and emails to pressure workers against organizing. Jacobson alleges union supporters have faced discipline, workplace surveillance, and new rules designed to make worker-to-worker communication far more difficult.
While higher pay is the union’s top demand, the persistent threat of immigration raids has also fueled organizing among Meta contract catering workers. In collective bargaining agreements for unionized cafeteria workers at Microsoft, Google, and other Meta offices, workers receive job protection while renewing their work permits, and immigration hearings count as excused, protected time off. “They have the security to live freely, without constant fear,” Mbengue says of his unionized counterparts at Microsoft. Those contracts also outline clear protocols for when ICE attempts to enter office campuses.
Workers say their fear of raids is not unfounded. They claim that on January 29, two agents wearing clothing marked “DHS” showed up at the Commons building reception on Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters campus, searching for a specific non-Microsoft employee who works on site. Reception turned the agents away, and Microsoft has not publicly confirmed whether the visitors were law enforcement.
Frank Shaw, Microsoft’s chief communications officer, says the company only permits law enforcement access to its buildings “only with a valid warrant or through defined, pre‑authorized arrangements coordinated by Global Security and legal teams for specific purposes.” He added that “officers are not allowed to enter or move through our campuses at will.” Meta, Lavish Roots, Amazon, and Google all declined or did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
“I Choose to Fight”
Mbengue says he fled Senegal in 2023, first staying with family in Memphis before relocating to Des Moines, Washington — roughly a two-hour commute in traffic from Meta’s Seattle-area campus. A friend helped him land his dishwashing role at the café in 2024. “There is no respect for us here. The work is extremely hard, we don’t earn enough, and it’s not a fair environment,” he says.
Those conditions led him to jump into union organizing almost immediately. He refused to suffer in silence. “I choose to fight,” he says. “It was the only option once I learned what the union could do, what we could accomplish together.”
Mbengue and other organizing leaders have been sharing the success of his brother’s fundraising campaign at cross-company meetings with tech activists, including a four-hour gathering one Saturday in March. “We as full-time Microsoft employees know the company isn’t going to respond to our demands in a way that works for us,” one in-house activist who attended the meeting says. “To be in a room with people who actually did the work to make change happen was really inspiring.”
The cross-company group is working to formalize a permanent immigration legal defense fund and build a network of accessible immigration attorneys. They are also compiling a list of workers willing to accompany colleagues to immigration hearings, help with paperwork, or cover other logistical needs. Last month, $2,000 in donations allowed one of Mbengue’s Senegalese kitchen coworkers to keep his immigration case in U.S. courts, rather than having it transferred to Uganda. Just last week, 35 employees and dining workers from Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google met to discuss expanding support for additional colleagues’ immigration cases.
Activists at Meta and Microsoft are still petitioning their companies to take formal action, including creating company-run, needs-based immigration defense funds for all workers (including third-party contractors). They also want firms to allow vulnerable immigrant workers to stay home without penalty on days when ICE activity is reported in the area. Meta has not responded to these demands, while the activist group at Microsoft has not yet submitted its formal request to company leadership.
The veteran Amazon engineer says he and other corporate desk workers at the company have a long history of supporting warehouse and delivery workers, but this collaboration with catering workers is a new step. He says standing with them now is important, as he and fellow engineers may need their support for future campaigns around climate or AI policy. “Solidarity means showing up in the ways they actually ask for,” the Amazon employee says. “Sometimes they just need money. It doesn’t always have to be big lofty demands or marches.”
Mbengue and other Meta dining workers say they are frustrated that even their simplest requests for greater safety have been ignored. Workers claim that since the start of this year, they have been charged roughly $300 a month to use the company’s underground parking garage, which has a secure elevator leading directly into the office building. That cost is out of reach for many workers, some of whom earn as little as $22 an hour. As a result, garage spots sit empty every day, while workers constantly watch for ICE as they walk from cheaper public parking or nearby train stations. Mbengue says Meta is needlessly exposing his team to danger. The company frames on-site dining as “a very important amenity and part of campus,” he says, “but this feels like one of the many ways their words don’t match their actions.”
