FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Thursday, November 6, 2025
CONTACTS: Deana Rutherford, deana@thepeopleslobbyusa.org, 773-230-8112
Unai Montes, u.montes@peoplesaction.org, 310-962-7369 (bilingual)
The People’s Lobby and People’s Action Are Naming and Shaming the Telecom Giant for Greed and Hypocrisy – Click Here for the Petition
Chicago, Illinois – The People’s Lobby and People’s Action have introduced a petition calling on AT&T to end its contract with ICE. With $30.7 billion in revenue in the third quarter of 2025 alone, AT&T does not need its 2024 or 2025 contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to remain profitable. Yet, the telecom giant is choosing to both collect money from customers who are in the crosshairs, and line its pockets with public dollars to help ICE agents – who are masked, unidentifiable, and operating without warrants – as they terrorize members of the public in communities like Chicago.
“AT&T has a choice to make: Be a good business, or exploit people. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t put people from every ethnicity in your ads, take TV, internet and cell phone money from customers who live in communities that are being scapegoated, and then provide ICE with the surveillance and first responders communications infrastructure they used to turn people’s homes into war zones. We don’t want Blackhawk helicopters and heavily armed infantrymen kicking down doors in the middle of the night to kidnap parents and zip tie children. Not in Chicago. Not anywhere,” said The People’s Lobby Executive Director Will Tanzman.
In the wake of President Donald Trump, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune passing a 10-year budget that included the unprecedented expansion of ICE resources, the largest transfer of wealth to the rich in history, and devastating cuts to vital programs such as Medicaid, Medicare, and SNAP, more and more Americans have begun to question why the billionaire and corporate beneficiaries of the tax cuts in the Big Ugly Bill are also on Trump donor lists and getting big government contracts funded with public dollars.
“There is more than enough for all of us to thrive if billionaires, CEOs, and corrupt politicians don’t hoard it. Corporations depend on our labor and earnings. Elected officials work for us. If they refuse to stop themselves from profiting off of our pain and threatening our rights and freedoms, then we have to organize to peacefully stop them. It’s time for AT&T to refuse to allow ICE to use their technology to separate families. It’s time for AT&T to take away access to communications systems meant to keep us and our neighbors safe from outside agents who seek to terrorize our communities. It’s time for AT&T to end their contract with ICE,” said People’s Action Executive Director Sulma Arias.
The petition calling on AT&T to end its contract with ICE is part of a growing movement to hold accountable the corporations that put profits over people. Other corporations named in grassroots campaigns launched recently include Home Depot, Amazon, and Target. Organizers expect that these campaigns will intensify in the coming weeks as the Thanksgiving holiday approaches, SNAP benefits are curtailed, and the resolution of the federal government shutdown over the extension of the Affordable Care Act subsidies set to expire in December remains uncertain.
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About The People’s Lobby:
The People’s Lobby is a membership-driven organization devoted to organizing widespread support for legislation and candidates that put the needs of people and the planet before the interests of big corporations and the very rich.
About People’s Action:
People’s Action is a proud national network of 38 member-based, power-building organizations in 29 states with more than a million members and tens of thousands of national volunteers. We are from every background, speak many languages, and live in small towns, cities and rural areas. We are all of us!