Salesforce agrees to meet with activists protesting border patrol contract

Salesforce has agreed to meet with activists to discuss its contracts with U.S. Border Patrol, according to Fight For the Future, a tech-focused advocacy group.

The company’s agreement to meet with Fight For The Future came with the advocacy group agreeing to halt a demonstration in which the group projected messages during a concert at Salesforce’s Dreamforce annual conference in San Francisco.

The messages urged concert-goers to contact Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff about the company’s multimillion-dollar contract with U.S. Border Patrol, which Fight For the Future opposes.

{mosads}Fight For the Future said that it would agree to the meetings if “Immigrants rights groups including Mijente and RAICES are invited to the meeting to represent directly affected communities.”

They also asked for the meeting to be “on the record and allowed to be recorded” and requested CEO’s Marc Benioff and Keith Block be present.

During the Dreamforce conference, Fight For the Future also debuted a 14-foot tall cage with Salesforce branding on it, meant to highlight its contracts with Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

“Marc Benioff and other Salesforce execs can pretend to model a socially conscious tech company all they want,” said Jelani Drew, a campaigner with Fight for the Future, “But until Salesforce drops their contract with Border Patrol, they are actively providing a tech foundation to enable human rights violations.”

Salesforce did not immediately return The Hill’s request for comment.

The moves by the advocacy group come as a part of a campaign to get technology companies to drop their contracts with immigration enforcement agencies.

Activists have demonstrated at a number of events, including a Burning Man, to raise awareness and opposition to Amazon’s work with Palantir, a company that has contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In July, Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) turned down a $250,000 donation from Salesforce in protest of the company’s CBP contract.

And, in June, hundreds of Salesforce employees signed a letter asking the company to drop its roughly $19 milion contract with the agency.