Benioff apologizes for much-despised National Guard comments

Marc Benioff’s newly public support for President Donald Trump isn’t just gum-flapping. Salesforce, the CEO’s gigantic San Francisco company, has reportedly been lobbying Immigration and Customs Enforcement to try and win a contract — and use artificial intelligence to help ICE dramatically expand its violent crackdown.

It’s a revelation that comes amid a wave of attention on Benioff, who recanted his recently espoused support for sending the National Guard into San Francisco in a post to X on Friday. He wrote that he no longer supports it: “My earlier comment came from an abundance of caution around the [Dreamforce] event, and I sincerely apologize for the concern it caused.”

The New York Times, on Thursday, published leaks that Salesforce did not contest. The documentation shows a multi-pronged effort by the company to aid ICE in conducting the raids, abductions and deportations that have become the cornerstone of Trump’s anti-immigration campaign. A Salesforce memo to the agency, sent Aug. 26, reportedly described it as an “ideal platform” to help ICE meet its “talent acquisition” goal: “nearly triple its work force by hiring 10,000 new officers and agents expeditiously.”

In the same memo, Salesforce pledged that it could help ICE, “identify, engage and acquire the talent profile proven to drive ICE mission success, and in turn, administration priorities,” the Times reported. Chatting in an ICE-focused internal Slack channel about the pitch, a Salesforce employee reportedly wrote that the document was “out the door,” and got a chorus of praise: fire emojis, an “amazing” and an, “I wish you the best of luck with this one!”

It isn’t clear what the contract would be worth, or whether Salesforce is on track to win it. Neither the company nor the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, responded to SFGATE’s request for comment. But the Times also reported that Salesforce has brainstormed ideas about how the company’s artificial intelligence agents could help the agency vet tips and aid investigations, and that it has a spreadsheet of possible ICE contracts, dubbed “opportunities.” The spreadsheet reportedly listed some contracts with ICE that are already completed. 

While the Times pointed out that Salesforce worked with the agency during the Obama and Biden administrations, and that it works with other government departments, the attempt to serve ICE’s rapid expansion comes amid a new directive for the agency. Trump and the Republican-led Congress, this summer, gave ICE an additional $30 billion for arrest and deportation efforts — including hiring — and $45 billion for detentions. The flood of cash comes as Trump and other administration officials pressure ICE to make far more arrests, including with a daily quota. As of a September story from the Guardian, the agency had already detained or deported more than 44,000 immigrants.

The upending of American life has rippled outward across families, communities and industries as ICE turns aggression into a week-to-week norm. The stories are grim and abundant: the worker who fell during an ICE raid in Southern California and later died, the Chicago-area pastor shot with a pepper spray ball, three deaths in ICE custody in 12 days and a Mexican immigrant shot and killed during a traffic stop. An expansion of ICE’s workforce, with Salesforce’s aid or without, would enable raids across a much broader swath of the country.

Benioff, who owns Time magazine, told the New York Times last week that he had not closely followed news about immigration raids, in an interview where he also said, “I fully support the president. I think he’s doing a great job.”

Unsurprisingly, the perspective landed him in hot water. Ron Conway, a famed Silicon Valley venture capitalist, has reportedly left the nonprofit Salesforce Foundation’s board because of Benioff’s call, in that Times interview, for National Guard troops to act as San Francisco police. Conway wrote, per reports, that he was “shocked and disappointed” by the comments and “by [Benioff’s] willful ignorance and detachment from the impacts of the ICE immigration raids of families with NO criminal record.”

Laurene Powell Jobs also sounded off against Benioff in a Thursday op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal. The philanthropist and investor skewered the CEO’s boasts about his donations to the city, and accused him of giving to get “a license to impose one’s will. It’s a kind of moral laundering, where so-called benevolence masks self-interest.”

The backlash appears to have gotten through, as Benioff’s Friday apology on X, a day after the company’s 2025 Dreamforce conference ended, depicted a chastised CEO. He wrote: “Having listened closely to my fellow San Franciscans and our local officials, and after the largest and safest Dreamforce in our history, I do not believe the National Guard is needed to address safety in San Francisco.” 

Benioff, in years past, has been a well-known contributor to progressive causes, including a tax on San Francisco corporations to contribute to funding for homelessness services. He’s also been a major advocate of “business as a platform for change,” touting donations and his company’s policy of pledging 1% of worker time toward equity and sustainability.

But with his statements to the Times and the outlet’s ICE reporting, that public image quickly evaporated. Benioff’s original National Guard comments prompted a wave of irritation from local officials, who sought to balance Salesforce’s economic benefits to the city with the unpopular idea of outside troops, which Trump supported at a press conference on Wednesday. There’s no doubt that Benioff’s update on X brought a sigh of relief.

San Francisco Supervisor Shamann Walton, who represents District 10, said in a statement to SFGATE on Friday, before Benioff’s apology: “I think it is sad that someone who once held progressive values, supported our SFUSD schools and fought to address homelessness, has now become someone who supports tyranny and has become a voice for bashing our beautiful city.”

Work at Salesforce or another Bay Area tech company and want to talk? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at stephen.council@sfgate.com or on Signal at 628-204-5452.