Paywall bypass: https://archive.today/N2tLZ

Multiple employees told 404 Media about the joke, and 404 Media obtained internal Slack chats showing employees discussing it. Benioff was giving the opening keynote at the Salesforce CKO event in Las Vegas on Tuesday, which is a major Salesforce meeting ‘kicking off’ its strategy for the year. In his keynote, Benioff thanked international employees for traveling to the United States for the meeting, and asked them to stand. Benioff then said that ICE agents were in the building to keep tabs on them.

Salesforce’s contracts with ICE have been controversial within the company, which is part of why employees weren’t happy with Benioff’s joke.

This is an example of “Silicon Valley CEOs and their inability to divorce ICE and the complete lack of understanding of why that makes them monsters,” a Salesforce employee told 404 Media. “Employees are going absolutely apeshit in internal Slack about how completely awful it was.” Another employee told 404 Media that Benioff “then followed it up with a joke about not understanding the message of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance. On its own just seems out of touch, but coupled with the previous joke it does seem worse.”

In October, Salesforce told ICE that it would be willing to allow the agency to use its AI to hire, and said the company was well-placed to help ICE “to nearly triple its work force by hiring 10,000 new officers and agents expeditiously.”