Trump ICE crackdown leaves CEOs weighing silence or backlash

The fatal shooting this weekend of a second American citizen by federal immigration agents in Minnesota has forced corporate leaders to do something they’ve rarely done since President Donald Trump returned to office last year: publicly disagree with his policies.

For months, executives have kept quiet as the Trump administration expanded its sprawling immigration crackdown. The Department of Homeland Security in recent weeks has sent thousands of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents into Minnesota, leading to violent clashes with protestors.

It wasn’t until the Jan. 24 killing of intensive care unit nurse Alex Pretti by federal agents that more CEOs started to break their year of near silence on the president’s actions. The following day, dozens of executives from Minnesota-based corporations co-signed a letter calling for an “immediate de-escalation” in the state.

Even then, it was clear the business leaders were treading carefully — they didn’t mention the name of the shooting victim, the president by name or his policies. Instead of speaking out individually, they published the message as a group.

The reluctance of business leaders — among the most powerful and wealthiest Americans — to explicitly speak out against the president’s policies illustrates how Trump has used his power during his second term. Trump has sued media companies, law firms, universities and banks, and he has threatened corporations with regulatory scrutiny and the review of lucrative government contracts.

“They don’t want to speak out alone because they are afraid,” Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale School of Management professor, told CNBC. “They know that they will be shaken down, coerced, intimidated [by the administration]. Retaliatory gestures are quite severe.”

Some CEOs have been slightly more bold: Days before Pretti’s killing, JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon became the first prominent U.S. CEO to criticize Trump’s immigration crackdown.

In the days that followed Pretti’s death, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Apple CEO Tim Cook have spoken out, too. Altman made pointed comments in a Slack message to OpenAI employees, saying that “part of loving the country is the American duty to push back against overreach” and that “what’s happening with ICE is going too far.”

In his own internal message to Apple’s workforce on Tuesday, Tim Cook described himself as “heartbroken by the events in Minneapolis” and called for “de-escalation,” adding that he had privately expressed concerns to Trump.

Trump has in recent days appeared to soften his approach to DHS’ presence in Minneapolis, using language of de-escalation that mirrored the executives’ public letter and saying he had “very respectful” calls with Minnesota Gov. Tim…