Tell Blackrock to divest from the deportation machine!

BlackRock, the world’s largest investor, talks a big game on sustainability. Over the past few years, it has upped its rhetoric, saying that companies must have a social purpose.

But BlackRock is financing companies like Palantir that help the Trump administration’s war on migrants -- resulting in families being torn apart, kids caged in camps, and raids that terrorize entire communities. It's up to you to hold BlackRock accountable.

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Dear BlackRock Investment Stewardship Team:

Sandra Boss, Michelle Edkins, Ray Cameron, Amar Gill, Barbara Novick, Gassia Fox, Amra Balic 
CC: Brian Deese, Larry Fink

Over the past few years, BlackRock has increased the public attention it gives to sustainability, climate change, and ethical investment principles. However, BlackRock’s direct investment in Palantir betrays such principles. BlackRock is a direct investor in Palantir -- a data analytics company that provides technology to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to help identify, track, and target immigrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers for detention and deportation. BlackRock’s financing of Palantir and similar companies enables the Trump Administration’s ongoing war against immigrants -- particularly Black and Brown communities -- and potentially facilitates gross human rights violations.

Under the Trump Administration, there has been an increased crackdown on migrant communities. Mass raids, detentions, and deportations carried out by ICE as part of a larger anti-immigrant agenda have manifested through family separation, caging children in camps, tear gassing asylum seekers, and terrorizing entire communities through immigration raids. This cruel and inhumane treatment of migrants is supported by tech companies like Palantir.

Palantir has received over $200 million in contracts to design and run software systems for ICE, enabling surveillance, mass raids, detentions, family separations, and deportations. This has included providing technology used to arrest hundreds of family members of migrant children who crossed the border alone, a precursor to the Trump Administration’s horrific family separation policy. Palantir technology has similarly been used by ICE to target, detain, and deport migrants and terrorize immigrant communities. In August 2019, Palantir systems enabled a workplace raid in Mississippi resulting in the arrest of 680 migrant workers. ICE’s war on migrants has persisted during the COVID-19 pandemic, continuing deportations and raids, putting more people at risk. ICE is detaining people in dangerous conditions in detention centers where it is impossible to socially distance.

In January, BlackRock announced it would begin placing concerns about the climate crisis at the center of its investment strategy. It is well documented that the adverse impacts of climate change disproportionately affect communities of color; similarly, extreme weather events such as floods, fires, and changes in seasonal weather patterns greatly impact communities that have least contributed to the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for the climate crisis.

Climate justice is as much about protecting the planet as it is about protecting fundamental human rights. As the world grapples with the climate crisis and the country rises up against systemic racism and police violence, is BlackRock going to maintain business with a company that enables a racist and unaccountable police force?

If BlackRock is serious about its commitment to sustainability – and wants to be on the right side of history -- it must immediately engage with Palantir to end its contracts with ICE. If Palantir does not respond by cancelling its contracts with ICE -- which it has already refused to do -- BlackRock should divest from Palantir. Furthermore, as Palantir seeks to go public, BlackRock should withhold any investment in the company as long as it continues to contract with ICE, and facilitate immigration raids, detentions, deportations and human rights abuses.

Sincerely, 
{user_data~First name} {user_data~Last name}
{user_data~City}, {user_data~State} {user_data~Postcode}

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