I'm no fan of ICE – a very large percentage of my friends in the US are immigrants, and I generally want my country to be a welcoming one. ICE has certainly committed unethical and probably illegal acts (probably true of most federal agencies).
But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity, especially for essentially political reasons, is lunacy. It'd attract extreme negative attention from the rest of the government, and great fear from all paying customers that an internet mob could separate them from their code at any time.
We should absolutely be lobbying hard for changes to immigration law, the restrictions placed on ICE, and justice for their wrongdoings.
But I can't see how this helps improve immigration, and it certainly seems likely to cause a lot of negative consequences for GitHub. The employees are putting their employer in a "damned if they do, damned if they don't" situation.
EDIT: Just to clarify, I love the vision of a world where executives don't take actions their workers will protest. I think that in order to get there, the protests need to be reasonable, and I think this one isn't.
EDIT DISCLAIMER: I own a small amount of MSFT stock, which was not on my mind as I wrote this. I use GitHub's free service and have no other relationship I can think of with MSFT or GitHub.
Github refuses to work with ICE today and hypothetically tomorrow will only host code for Democrats? I'm certainly no fan of ICE, but I'm also not sure I like ceding even more control to corporations. Perhaps I'm naive in thinking we can still fix the US through voting.
This is a highly debatable opinion.
> A corporation refusing to work with a legal entity really shows just how much power corporations now have.
Not really, everyone has always had a choice. It's just sometimes a choice that they cannot refuse. And, as far as choosing to only host "democrat" code, where would we like that line? At Chinese code? How about NK? What about environmental activists that US oil interests don't like? The scope of this argument is larger and pertains to how we would like to structure our means of production and about what actors we care to dis-incentivize and why. Since ICE systematically abuses its power over vulnerable people, I'd say "stop it by any means necessary, save further harm." If the corporation is a spear, then throw it; if the law is a sword, swing it. If people are being egregiously harmed in it, it is the duty of the people to end it.