And before anyone invokes Godwin's Law, ICE has been recently discovered to have literally poisoned detainees by using toxic cleaning chemicals in close proximity to detainees without giving them any protection or sufficient ventilation[2].
But even if you think it is unreasonable or overblown to call ICE nazis or fascists, I still question the premise that companies should not be held morally responsible for the people they knowingly and willingly do business with. If GitHub was selling software to known terrorists, you'd better believe that the American government (and hopefully most people) wouldn't see it as being fair game.
I agree that the lasting way to stop the abuses by ICE is through legislative and administrative changes, but I disagree with the argument that "refusing to sell software to ICE won't stop them from committing abuses, so I'll just sell them software anyway" is ethically justified. Now, GitHub is obviously free to do whatever they like but the public should also be free to point this out whenever they try to take the moral high ground.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust [2]: https://thecrimereport.org/2020/06/11/ice-spraying-disinfect...
One particular facet in the discussion that stuck with me more than the rest was a comment by a co-worker who was visiting from the Berlin office.
They talked briefly about small monuments on the street by their home marking the spots where people were arrested and taken to concentration camps as their time and place of death. They pointed out that in many cases those dates are in the mid 1930s. Up to 10 years before the discovery and liberation of the death camps.
Calling ICE nazis (while still hopefully hyperbole) is not necessarily an unfounded comparison.
You presume that "dealing with illegal immigration has popular support" is the same as "the public broadly supports arbitrary cruelty to illegal immigrants".
The US population (~80%) appears to think "dealing with illegal immigration" should mean "provide a path to citizenship" [1]
1. https://news.gallup.com/poll/1660/immigration.aspx
> I don't think it's fair or makes sense to single them out.
ICE has earned all of the scrutiny they get. ICE does not seem to care about the welfare of the people in its care [2]. It does not seem to care about US immigration law [3]. Or the rights of legal immigrants [4]. ICE employees say ICE prioritizes rounding up law abiding families over criminal investigations [5].
[2] https://theintercept.com/2018/04/11/immigration-detention-se...
[3] https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-11-15/asylum-off...
[4] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/01/ice-is-out-of-co...
[5] https://www.texasobserver.org/ice-hsi-letter-kirstjen-nielse...
There are tens of thousands of them now, every one of them installed by the artist who originally came up with the idea.
They are installed in front of their last place of residence. So it's really decentralised, and the realisation that the Holocaust happened in your street (or even to people living in the house you now life in) is powerful.
(~80%) appears to think "dealing with illegal immigration" should mean "provide a path to citizenship" [1]
Meanwhile, that exact same poll had 75% of respondents favoring "Hiring significantly more border patrol agents."