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Federal agents detain a protester in Minneapolis on Tuesday.CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP/Getty Images
Gus Carlson is a U.S.-based columnist for The Globe and Mail.
Companies that find themselves under pressure to distance themselves from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have no one but their peers to blame.
Over the past few years, many corporate leadership teams opened the door for trouble, caving to activists’ demands that they weigh in on social and political issues that have nothing to do with the products or services they sell.
As conflict escalates between ICE and protestors in Minneapolis, some companies are on that slippery slope again. Activist groups are compiling lists of companies that do business with ICE, pressuring them to cancel their contracts with the agency.
Among those under threat are Canadian concerns such as the Toronto-based information technology company Thomson Reuters, the Montreal-based private security firm GardaWorld, Vancouver’s Hootsuite and Jim Pattison Group and Rochel, a maker of armoured vehicles based in Brampton, Ont. (Woodbridge Co. Ltd., the controlling shareholder of Thomson Reuters, also owns The Globe and Mail.)
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Put aside for a moment that marches and boycotts are among the most intellectually lazy protest tactics, especially in an environment with myriad platforms for people to grind their axes.
They are noisy, disruptive and often confrontational. Think pitchfork and torch-bearing medieval mobs – only now they are armed with iPhones and professionally printed signs.
Beyond the witless theatre, companies need to remember that for every activist they try to placate on the one side, they run the risk of alienating a stakeholder on the other.
The U.S. population is highly fragmented – and becoming more so. There is a growing percentage of people who lean neither left nor right: a record-high 45 per cent of U.S. adults identified as political independents in 2025. Canada’s population is similar.
As many executive leadership teams have learned, there is little to be gained – and often much to be lost –by veering off the course of running a business into the social and political realms.
What makes such detours particularly tricky is that social and political issues that have tripped up companies recently have come from both sides of the ideological aisle.
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Look at Anheuser-Busch. An overeager left-of-centre brand manager decided to shake up what she saw as Bud Light’s “fratty” brand appeal by staging a cross-promotion with a transgender social media influencer. The right-leaning brand loyalists revolted, boycotting the beer, sinking sales and tanking the stock.
Tesla felt the sting of its founder and CEO Elon Musk’s foray into U.S. federal politics as an ally of President Donald Trump and the de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency.
Anti-Trumpers inflicted all types of damage on Teslas in several cities, including vandalizing and even fire-bombing the cars.
Workers at Wayfair, the online home furnishing and décor company, staged a walkout to protest U.S. immigration policy, citing the fact that contractors to the U.S. government were buying products from the company to furnish migrant detention centres on the U.S.-Mexico border.
To its credit, the company did not fold or apologize, saying it did not – and could not by law – discriminate against any customer. It is, after all, a business mandated to serve everyone, not just those customers who certain groups consider to be politically aligned.
Of course, companies are expected to act in ethical and moral ways, but that doesn’t mean drifting outside their commercial lanes and feeling compelled to wade into political quicksand.
Two weeks ago, 60 companies in Minnesota released a statement asking for a de-escalation of the conflict between ICE and protestors.
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But the companies avoided going deep into the political arguments behind the unrest. Their focus was on the disruption to the community and concerns that their employees were in harm’s way.
As job creators and engines of the economy, they had a measured response lost on the many protesters who by contrast contribute little or nothing to the economy or community.
Simply put, recent history shows there is more downside than upside for companies to get sucked into taking sides on social and political issues beyond their mandates.
So, if pressed – and especially if threatened – to take action or issue commentary meant to appease an interest group of any stripe, executive leadership teams should just say, no.
