No Azure for Apartheid call on Microsoft to cut ties with ICE, amid reports of agency deepening reliance on company's cloud and AI

No Azure For Apartheid argue Microsoft tech "powers ICE's violence towards migrants and communities in the United States"

In the aftermath of reports claiming that the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) deepened their reliance on Microsoft’s cloud technology last year, No Azure for Apartheid have issued a statement demanding the company cut ties with the agency.

No Azure for Apartheid are the same worker-led group who've carried out protests against Microsoft's dealings with the Israeli military, amid what Amnesty International and a UN enquiry have called a genocide in Gaza.

According to reporting from The Guardian and partner publications +972 Magazine and Local Call earlier this week, leaked documents indicate that ICE increased the amount of data it stored on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform from from 400 terabytes as of July 2025 to almost 1,400 terabytes as of January 2026. The agency are also reportedly using Microsoft "productivity tools, as well as AI-driven products, to search and analyse the data".

In a statement to The Guardian, a Microsoft spokesperson said that while they do "[provide] cloud-based productivity and collaboration tools to DHS and ICE" via "key partners", the company's policies and terms of service "do not allow our technology to be used for the mass surveillance of civilians, and we do not believe ICE is engaged in such activity".

Following this reporting, No Azure for Apartheid have issued a statement on the subject to PC Gamer. "No Azure for Apartheid recognizes that the same Microsoft Cloud & AI technology that forms the technological backbone of Israel's apartheid and genocide is the same technology that powers ICE's violence towards migrants and communities in the United States," the group wrote.

"We, as Microsoft workers, stand in solidarity both with Palestinians and the communities and families in the United States who are being terrorized, detained, murdered, and deported by ICE," they continued. "We echo the demands of hundreds of workers and community members who spoke out as early as 2018 to demand Microsoft cut ties with ICE."

I've reached out to Microsoft for comment.

Microsoft reportedly revoked the Israeli military's access to certain Azure cloud and generative AI technologies in September last year, following reporting that this tech was being used for surveilance of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.