Following the 2025 election, King County residents sent a clear message: we want a break from business as usual and from corporate-friendly governance. Voters rejected entrenched incumbents and elected new leadership on promises of accountability, equity, and community-centered decision-making. That is why many of us are deeply concerned by one of the earliest signals from the new administration—the decision to include executives from Microsoft and Amazon, particularly Microsoft President Brad Smith, on the King County Executive’s transition team.

This decision directly contradicts the will of voters and the values of our communities.

Microsoft and Amazon are not neutral corporate actors. Over the past several years, these companies have expanded lucrative contracts with the Israeli military, U.S. military and War profiteers, ICE, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection—providing cloud infrastructure, AI, surveillance, and data systems that enable mass violence, detention, deportation, and repression both abroad and here at home. Their profits have soared while human suffering has intensified.

For more than 800 days, the world has witnessed an ongoing genocide in Palestine, backed and funded by the United States. At the same time, 2025 became one of the deadliest years on record for people in ICE custody, with at least 32 people dying while detained.

In just the first week of January 2026, federal enforcement violence escalated again:

• Renee Nicole Good, a U.S. citizen and bystander, was shot three times and killed by ICE in Minneapolis.
• Two more people were shot by Customs and Border Protection in Portland, Oregon.
• Alex Pretti, a Minnesota resident and ICU nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital, was shot and killed by CBP/ICE.

On January 8, 2026, the King County Executive publicly condemned this violence, calling these killings a “horrific and unnecessary loss of life” and acknowledging that fear-based immigration enforcement strips people of their humanity and makes communities less safe. The statement affirmed King County’s commitment to the Keep Washington Working law and recognized that public safety depends on trust—trust that cannot exist when people are afraid to seek help or engage with local government.

But words alone are not enough.

While local governments may be constrained by certain laws and court rulings, it is undeniable that ICE, CBP, and the federal government routinely violate both domestic and international legal norms. Their ability to carry out this violence depends on the surveillance, cloud, and AI technologies provided by companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Palantir—corporations that profit from state violence, lobby against fair taxation, influence elections, suppress dissent, and shape public narratives to protect their own power.

King County cannot credibly condemn immigration enforcement violence while continuing to collaborate with the corporations that enable it.

Community members, workers, and organizers have acted in good faith. A community petition letter has been delivered, nearly 100 constituents have submitted personal comments, and requests to meet have been made. These calls have gone unanswered.

This email campaign is calling on King County leadership to align its actions with its stated values—and with the mandate voters delivered in 2025.

We are urging King County leadership to:

1. Cut ties with Brad Smith, Microsoft, Amazon, and other corporations implicated in genocide, war profiteering, surveillance, and deportation.
2. Respond directly to the community petition letter, meet our demands, and honor the request to meet with workers and organizers.
3. Commit to governance that prioritizes human rights, dignity, and accountability over corporate access and influence.

We cannot afford another year in which corporations that profit from genocide, surveillance, and deportation operate with impunity. Making state violence economically and politically unviable requires divestment—and it requires that collaboration with those complicit comes at a real cost.

King County residents voted for change. Now it’s time for leadership to deliver.