Amazon’s ICE Work, Anti-Union Tack Called Queens HQ2 Deal-Breakers

The cloud-computing program will help students “learn skills for entry-level tech roles, whether at Amazon or other tech companies,” said Huseman. Any intentions he had of winning favor with HQ2 critics disintegrated quickly after Council Speaker Corey Johnson, D-Manhattan, got Huseman to concede Amazon won't commit to a policy of “neutrality” if its Long Island City employees wanted to unionize.

Amazon is “too big and too strong and too powerful, and the thing that’s always been the equalizer are unions,” said Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, D-Queens, whose District 26 is where HQ2 would be based. Unions can “form real power against people like Jeff Bezos,” said Van Bramer of the Amazon CEO. New York’s agreement to bring Amazon to Long Island City is “a union-busting deal,” he said.

Johnson got into a shouting match with Huseman when he asked whether any of the company’s existing 5,000 employees in the city are involved in the work that Amazon does with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to track undocumented immigrants. Huseman said Amazon policy bars identifying clients without their permission.

ICE uses Amazon software to “round up and deport people,” and that's not in keeping with New York's standing as a sanctuary city, said Johnson. “Are you comfortable with that?” Huseman replied the “recognition technology” to which Johnson referred is a mathematical “algorithm” that “helps match images that are in a customer’s database,” and has “very beneficial uses,” such as in finding missing kids.

Amazon’s terms prohibit clients from using the technology for “illegal conduct,” including “violations of civil or constitutional rights,” said Huseman. “If any customer -- business or government -- violates civil or constitutional rights using this technology, we will absolutely terminate that relationship.” That didn't placate Van Bramer, who said there are ICE practices that technically might not be illegal, but they're "immoral." ICE didn’t comment.

Van Bramer later pressed James Patchett, CEO of the city’s Economic Development Corp., whether Mayor Bill de Blasio (D), a critic of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, has authority to “revoke” his support of HQ2 if it's confirmed Amazon works with ICE on immigration enforcement. “I don’t know that we have any facts about what’s actually happening” between Amazon and ICE, said Patchett. “The mayor’s going to be discussing that with the company directly.” It’s de Blasio’s decision “how to proceed” on the Amazon deal, and “right now, he believes in the job opportunities” it creates, he said. De Blasio’s office didn’t comment.

There’s “so much” that Amazon is getting from the city in tax abatements, subsidies and incentives to build HQ2, “and so little you are giving,” scolded Van Bramer of the testifying executives. “You come here with 30 jobs” for public-housing tenants, he said, when thousands live in the HQ2-adjacent Queensbridge Houses, the largest U.S. municipal-housing project. “You are spending more to mail those garbage mailers all over the city of New York than you are on the people of Queensbridge.”

Ardine Williams, Amazon vice president-people operations, took exception, saying those to be hired from public housing “are not the only 30,” and that the starting number was agreed upon in Amazon's talks with community organizers in Queens. That’s "how I started the veterans’ pilot,” said Williams, a retired Army captain. The program recruited returning veterans for Amazon tech jobs, she said. That pilot started with 16 veterans, "and it’s over 1,000 now, and I’m proud of that," she said. “Those are jobs that created a ladder and a path for people who may not otherwise have had access to jobs that come up the corporate ladder.”