At Salesforce’s annual company kickoff event in Las Vegas on February 10, 2026, CEO Marc Benioff took the stage to address thousands of employees, both in person and via livestream. The company, known for its emphasis on values and equality, was set to begin its new year’s strategy with energy and unity. Instead, Benioff’s remarks—particularly a series of jokes about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—sparked a wave of internal outrage, raising uncomfortable questions about corporate culture, political allegiances, and the boundaries of humor in the workplace.
According to Gazetteer SF, Benioff’s opening keynote included a moment where he asked international employees who had traveled to the United States for the event to stand and be recognized. As applause faded, he quipped that ICE agents were present in the back of the room. The reaction was immediate and unmistakable: faint boos and groans rippled through the crowd, and employees quickly took to the company’s internal Slack channels to voice their shock and displeasure.
Several staffers, as reported by 404 Media, recounted the moment in real time. One wrote, “If you’re visiting from outside the United States, please stand … ICE is keeping track of that.” Another summarized the joke as, “Please everyone stand who traveled here internationally. And then while they are still standing, ‘there are ICE agents in the hall to keep tabs on you.’” The room’s discomfort was palpable. “We couldn’t believe he said that,” one employee commented. The incident quickly became the main topic of conversation internally, with one staffer describing the mood as employees going “absolutely apeshit in internal Slack about how completely awful it was.”
Benioff, whose leadership style has often been described as charismatic and occasionally off-the-cuff, didn’t stop there. Later in his keynote, he made a callback to the ICE theme while discussing the adoption of a Slackbot tool, again referencing ICE agents. He also took a jab at Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime performance the night before, saying he wasn’t sure what it was about. For many employees, the sequence of comments felt increasingly out of touch, especially given Salesforce’s ongoing internal debates about its business relationship with ICE.
As Business Insider and Wired confirmed, the backlash was swift and intense. Dozens of Slack messages captured the anger and disappointment among staff. “A joke about ICE surveilling employees’ travel, when there are literally employees afraid to travel for work due to current situation,” one employee wrote. Another said, “It’s hard to believe this company still has values when you make completely off-base jokes about ICE in your opening keynote. That’s unacceptable.” A third, deeply unsettled, added, “I’m deeply disappointed and uncomfortable that two jokes about ICE were made in the first few minutes of Marc’s opening keynote. The fact that the first was made after welcoming our teammates who traveled from outside the US? Even worse.”
The discontent didn’t stop at online venting. According to Wired, Salesforce employees began circulating an internal letter addressed to Benioff. The letter called on the CEO to denounce recent actions by ICE, prohibit the use of Salesforce software by immigration agents, and back federal legislation to reform the agency. The letter cited the recent killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis as a “devastating indictment of a system that has discarded human decency.” It further criticized Salesforce’s reported efforts to pitch AI technology to ICE, which could help the agency hire 10,000 new agents and vet tip-line reports. “Providing ‘Agentforce’ infrastructure to scale a mass deportation agenda that currently detains 66,000 people—73 percent of whom have no criminal record—represents a fundamental betrayal of our commitment to the ethical use of technology,” the letter stated.
Some employees questioned whether an apology or recognition from leadership would suffice at this point. As one poignant message in Slack asked, “Serious question: would a statement of apology/recognition/whatever by someone (anyone) actually do anything at this point? Or has a rubicon of sorts been crossed?” In another Slack channel, employees posted a meme referencing a Nazi officer with the caption, “Are we the baddies?”—a darkly comic signal of the depth of their discomfort and the seriousness with which they viewed the issue.
The controversy over Benioff’s jokes was compounded by Salesforce’s history of contracts with ICE, a longstanding point of contention within the company. Employees have previously pressured leadership to cut ties with the agency and take a firmer public stand against its policies. The company’s apparent willingness to pitch advanced AI and cloud tools to ICE only heightened concerns about complicity in what many employees view as morally questionable practices.
Benioff himself is no stranger to political controversy or shifting alliances. As Wired detailed, his political donations and public statements in recent years have spanned the spectrum: supporting Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016, backing Democratic candidates in 2020, but more recently signaling support for some Republican leaders. Notably, in the fall of 2025, Benioff suggested in an interview that President Donald Trump should deploy the National Guard to San Francisco ahead of Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference—a comment that drew significant backlash from employees and the public alike. He apologized and later reversed his stance, joining other tech leaders in urging Trump not to send troops. In another interview, Benioff joked about “donating” a Time magazine cover featuring Trump, whom the publication named its 2024 Person of the Year, instead of contributing to Trump’s inauguration fund.
This latest incident comes at a tumultuous time for Salesforce. The company, the largest private employer in San Francisco, has recently faced high-profile executive departures and layoffs. Denise Dresser, CEO of the company’s messaging app Slack, left to join OpenAI. Ryan Aytay, a 19-year Salesforce veteran, and Adam Evans, who led the Agentforce AI platform, have also exited. Ariel Kelman, Salesforce’s chief marketing officer, departed for AMD. These leadership changes have added to a sense of instability and uncertainty among employees.
For many at Salesforce, Benioff’s ICE jokes were more than just a misjudged attempt at humor—they were seen as emblematic of deeper issues surrounding company values, leadership accountability, and the ethical implications of technology partnerships. As one employee put it in a Slack message, “We have many great things to be proud of and stand behind at this company, but these tasteless, insensitive jokes have made it hard to focus on that message. I’m going to have to take a break from watching to regroup.”
Whether Salesforce leadership will respond publicly to the internal letter and mounting employee pressure remains to be seen. For now, the episode stands as a stark reminder that in today’s corporate environment, words matter—and so does the willingness to listen when those words miss the mark.