Salesforce’s New Vision: Turning “Ohana” Into “ICE-hana”

In a twist that no one in San Francisco saw coming — except maybe the people who’ve noticed Marc Benioff’s slow metamorphosis from tech Buddha to AI border hawk — The New York Times reports that Salesforce has offered its services to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement triple its workforce under President Trump’s second term.

Yes, the same Salesforce that brought you “Ohana culture,” rainbow-soaked Dreamforce stages, and mascots shaped like woodland creatures now wants to optimize ICE’s “talent acquisition pipeline.” Somewhere in San Francisco, a thousand kombucha taps just ran dry out of grief.

From Dreamforce to Deportforce

According to The Times’s reporting by Heather Knight, internal Salesforce memos and Slack screenshots show the company pitching ICE on how its AI can “identify, engage and acquire” the perfect candidates to “drive ICE mission success.”

Translation: Salesforce wants to help ICE recruit 10,000 new officers faster — because, apparently, nothing scales like a SaaS-enabled deportation engine.

The five-page pitch deck reportedly included language about “aggressive, high-yield marketing strategies” to lure applicants, which raises some questions:

• Is ICE going to start running Instagram ads saying “Join our mission! 10,000 openings! Free Salesforce certification included”?
• Will Einstein GPT write deportation letters with cheerful emojis and predictive sentiment analysis?
• And most importantly: how long before Benioff brands the whole thing as “Compassionate Enforcement Cloud”?

Marc Benioff: From Philanthro-CEO to Trump’s Favorite Technocrat

Let’s take a moment to appreciate the character arc here.

Marc Benioff, once the de facto conscience of the tech elite, used to fund homelessness initiatives, boycott anti-LGBTQ+ laws, and call for a “business of change.” He hosted Hillary Clinton fundraisers, championed progressive taxes, and built the Salesforce Tower — the giant, gleaming symbol of San Francisco’s tech-powered utopia.

Now? He’s apparently “fully supporting” President Trump and asking the National Guard to “restore order” to San Francisco, according to The New York Times.

At Dreamforce 2025, while the city outside wrestled with this ideological earthquake, Benioff was reportedly inside preaching “unity” and “ohana” — the Hawaiian word for family — while sipping metaphorical piña coladas onstage with David Sacks, Trump’s AI and crypto czar.

If this sounds like an episode of Black Mirror titled “Aloha ICE Cloud,” that’s because it basically is.

“Ohana” Means Family — Unless You’re an Immigrant

San Francisco officials, predictably, were horrified.
Board of Supervisors member Danny Sauter told The Times that Benioff is “straying farther and farther from San Francisco values.” State Senator Scott Wiener called it “completely unacceptable” for a city-born company to “help ICE scale up so that it can deploy more secret police to terrorize people in American neighborhoods.”

Those quotes alone deserve to be printed on protest signs — ideally held by people in Astro costumes outside the next Dreamforce.

Meanwhile, in Salesforce’s internal Slack, account reps reportedly responded to the ICE pitch with fire emojis and “amazing!!!” messages. Somewhere, a marketer was probably A/B testing slogans like:

“ICE: Powered by Salesforce. Because deportations should be data-driven.”

From “Business as a Platform for Change” to “Business as a Platform for ICE”

Of course, Salesforce insists this is nothing new. The company has long worked with the U.S. government — under Obama, Biden, and now Trump — across agencies like the Army, Coast Guard, and Veterans Affairs. “We serve the government under many administrations,” the company said in a statement.

Which is a polite way of saying: “Ethics is just another variable in our customer segmentation dashboard.”

To be fair, Salesforce isn’t alone. Palantir (Peter Thiel’s data panopticon), Microsoft, and IBM all have ICE contracts. The difference is that Benioff has spent years branding himself as tech’s moral compass — the guy who once said, “The business of business is improving the state of the world.”

Now it seems the state of the world he’s improving is the one behind a detention fence.

ICE-as-a-Service: Coming to a SaaS Dashboard Near You

Let’s imagine the demo.
A Salesforce rep in a polo shirt clicks through a shiny dashboard:

• “Here’s our AI-assisted deportation pipeline!”
• “Here’s predictive analytics for border crossings!”
• “And here’s Einstein GPT flagging high-value targets in real time — based on sentiment, engagement, and last known geolocation.”

All wrapped in cheerful UX design and rounded corners. Because cruelty looks better with gradients.

If Benioff really wanted to “humanize” ICE’s operations, maybe he could deploy Trailhead badges like:

• 🧢 “Recruitment Ranger” — for hiring 100 agents!
• 🚔 “Border Guardian” — for detaining your first 1,000 immigrants!
• 🌈 “Ohana Enforcer” — for ensuring family separation remains cloud-native!

The Tech Industry’s Trump Era Glow-Up

Benioff isn’t alone in cozying up to Trump. As The Times notes, tech leaders have been lining up for photo ops, gifts, and state dinners. It’s less “resistance” and more “relationship management.”

After all, Trump controls budgets, regulations, and — in this administration — maybe even your next AI export license. If you can’t beat him, you might as well train your AI model to predict his moods.

The irony is thick: Silicon Valley spent the past decade branding itself as the moral counterweight to Washington. Now it’s auditioning to become Washington’s back office.

The Fallout (or Just Another Tuesday in Tech)

Salesforce’s stock hasn’t cratered (yet), and Benioff hasn’t apologized (yet). He may not need to. As The Times points out, government contracts are Salesforce’s “largest and most important customer,” worth billions. In a world where quarterly growth trumps moral consistency, this is just business as usual — literally.

But San Francisco won’t forget easily. For a city that once saw Benioff as its corporate conscience, this feels like betrayal at a civic level — the hometown hero turning into the corporate enforcer.

Maybe it’s time to update the company slogan:

“Salesforce: The Platform for Change. (Terms and deportation conditions apply.)”

Final Thought

Marc Benioff once told the world that capitalism needs a soul.
Now he’s selling AI souls by the thousand to ICE.

The tech industry has always loved to talk about disruption.
This time, it’s disrupting its own morality — one government contract at a time.