Hootsuite Drops ICE Contract After Employee Backlash

Sam Anderson, a senior training specialist at Hootsuite, tweeted Wednesday that Hootsuite, a social media marketing platform, signed a three-year deal with ICE over the opposition of more than 100 employees, revealing for the first time that Hootsuite was working with the vastly unpopular agency.

Anderson argued the company, especially as a B Corporation, shouldn’t be taking money from an agency with a history of separating families and that’s been hit with a whistleblower complaint alleging it’s performed forced hysterectomies on detainees.

“Even more heartbreaking is that multiple members of our Mexico City support team have relayed their personal experiences being targeted and harassed by ICE, and our leadership team chose to push this deal through anyway,” she tweeted.

Anderson’s Twitter thread garnered considerable pushback with 7,300 retweets and 19,700 likes and calls from social media managers to stop using Hootsuite entirely.

In response to the backlash, Hootsuite reversed course and said in a statement Thursday morning, “Due to the attention around this particular case we can confirm that Hootsuite has decided not to do business with the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.”

But the status of the contract is unclear because records indicate that a company called FCN, Inc. already signed a $508,832.48 contract on September 18 to provide “Hootsuite licenses” to the agency, Motherboard first reported. (Hootsuite did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Forbes.)