Marc Benioff’s ICE Quip Blows up at Salesforce — and Employees Are Furious

Business Insider and the Guardian contributed to this report.

“Dude. What.”
“NOT FUNNY.”
“Deeply horrifying.”

Those were the vibes in an internal Slack channel after CEO Marc Benioff cracked jokes about ICE during a companywide event this week — bad timing for a company already trying to steady the ship after a brutal year (its stock is down about 43%).

Instead of a pep-talk, Benioff’s offhand lines — asking international staff to stand and then joking that ICE agents were in the back, ribbing people who hadn’t used Slackbot, and sneering about Bad Bunny — landed like a lead balloon. A recording of the keynote posted internally was edited to cut out the ICE gag, but the reaction on the company’s “airing of grievances” channel was instant and raw: employees flooded it with anger, fear and calls for accountability.

The backlash didn’t stop at rank-and-file. Slack’s general manager, Rob Seaman, said flatly he “cannot defend or explain” the remarks. A Salesforce vice president, Craig Broscow, urged Benioff to acknowledge that large swaths of staff were upset — a request that, so far, hasn’t been answered publicly.

This all crops up as Salesforce bets big on AI tools like Agentforce, copes with high-profile exec exits, and tries to convince investors that demand will pick up. Plenty of people inside the company see Monday’s jokes as more than tone-deaf — they see them as another dent in leadership credibility at a moment when trust matters.

Employees scrambled to organize a response: letters demanding Benioff denounce ICE and cut business with the agency, talk of walkouts or mass call-offs, and petitions to protect colleagues on visas. Some said they were contacted by company organizers for missing parts of the internal program after the remarks, with an email asking them to explain why they weren’t in sessions — a move that only inflamed tempers.

This isn’t the first time Benioff’s freewheeling stage persona has backfired. He’s had flashes of provocative commentary before — sometimes it lands, sometimes it doesn’t. But amid layoffs, leadership churn and an uncertain AI rollout, many workers say the misstep feels bigger: it’s not just a bad joke, it’s a reminder that internal culture and employee safety can be tossed aside.

For now, staff want two things: a clear apology and a real acknowledgment that the comments harmed people — especially those here on international visas who could genuinely fear enforcement action. Whether Benioff gives that, or the company’s leaders step in to calm things, will say a lot about where Salesforce goes next.