The fatal taking pictures this weekend of a 2nd American citizen by federal immigration agents in Minnesota has compelled company leaders to believe something they’ve hardly ever ever finished since President Donald Trump returned to set of job closing one year: publicly disagree along with his policies.
For months, executives obtain saved aloof because the Trump administration expanded its sprawling immigration crackdown. The Division of Scream of foundation Security in most contemporary weeks has sent thousands of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents into Minnesota, main to violent clashes with protestors.
It wasn’t unless the Jan. 24 killing of intensive care unit nurse Alex Pretti by federal agents that more CEOs began to interrupt their one year of finish to silence on the president’s actions. The following day, dozens of executives from Minnesota-based companies co-signed a letter calling for an “immediate de-escalation” in the negate.
Even then, it develop into as soon as clear the business leaders had been treading fastidiously — they did no longer point out the title of the taking pictures sufferer, the president by title or his policies. As a replacement of speaking out individually, they published the message as a neighborhood.
The reluctance of business leaders — amongst the strongest and wealthiest People — to explicitly focus on out in opposition to the president’s policies illustrates how Trump has feeble his vitality at some stage in his 2nd term. Trump has sued media companies, law companies, universities and banks, and he has threatened companies with regulatory scrutiny and the evaluation of profitable govt contracts.
“They don’t want to speak out alone because they are afraid,” Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale School of Management professor, educated CNBC. “They know that they will be shaken down, coerced, intimidated [by the administration]. Retaliatory gestures are quite severe.”
In subzero temperatures, demonstrators marched in downtown Minneapolis on Jan. 23, 2026, waving indicators decrying ongoing immigration enforcement operations in the Twin Cities metro set.
Alex Kormann | The Minnesota Huge title Tribune | Getty Photos
Some CEOs were a miniature more heroic: Days forward of Pretti’s killing, JPMorgan Inch’s Jamie Dimon turned the principle excellent U.S. CEO to criticize Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Within the days that followed Pretti’s loss of life, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Apple CEO Tim Put collectively dinner obtain spoken out, too. Altman made pointed comments in a Slack message to OpenAI workers, asserting that “part of loving the country is the American duty to push back against overreach” and that “what’s happening with ICE is going too far.”
In his have internal message to Apple’s team on Tuesday, Tim Put collectively dinner described himself as “heartbroken by the events in Minneapolis” and called for “de-escalation,” adding that he had privately expressed concerns to Trump.
Trump has in most contemporary days looked as if it would possibly perhaps in point of fact soften his skill to DHS’ presence in Minneapolis, the usage of language of de-escalation that mirrored the executives’ public letter and asserting he had “very respectful” calls with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. But he has but to pull ICE agents from Minneapolis, and or no longer it is unclear when he’ll believe so.
Trump’s alternate in tone comes because the possibility rises of a partial govt shutdown later this week, with Democrats vowing to oppose funding for the DHS in extensive fraction thanks to opposition to the administration’s Minneapolis operation.
Experts acknowledged one ingredient has been made clear: Pretti’s loss of life and the viral unfold of flicks and prognosis surrounding his final moments designate there are limits to the obedience of the business neighborhood.
Minneapolis, dwelling to mega companies admire Target, UnitedHealth and 3M, has change into the making an are attempting out ground for when and the contrivance in which some distance company leaders will wade into escalating political tensions, heightened by a president who pushes the limits of negate vitality.
An ICE patch and badge are seen on a Division of Scream of foundation Security agent while Vice President JD Vance offers remarks following a roundtable discussion with local leaders and neighborhood participants amid a surge of federal immigration authorities in the set, at Royalston Sq. in Minneapolis, Jan. 22, 2026.
Jim Watson | Pool | Getty Photos
Weaponizing vitality
There are examples of company leaders having feeble their affect and turning the tide forward of. Within the autumn, Trump deliberate ICE enforcement in San Francisco. Yet the president called it off in fraction because of the conversations with Bay Assign of abode business leaders, along with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
Since ICE and Border Patrol agents poured into Minnesota dumb closing one year in a thought dubbed Operation Metro Surge, movies obtain confirmed agents shoving protestors, detaining children, spraying demonstrators with chemical irritants and, in no longer much less than two cases, the usage of their firearms.
The operation followed the same efforts in cities along with Chicago and Recent Orleans, sparking concerns of what some saw as agency overreach.
″I believe no longer admire what I’m seeing, with 5 grown males beating up miniature females,” JPMorgan’s Dimon said during an onstage interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “I judge we must unruffled down a miniature bit on the internal infuriate about immigration.”
Later in that discussion, Dimon’s interviewer, The Economist Editor-in-Chief Zanny Minton Beddoes, told the veteran CEO that she was surprised at how careful he and other leaders were in speaking about Trump.
“I’m in point of fact struck by the unwillingness of CEOs in The United States to claim something essential,” Minton Beddoes said. “There would possibly be an area weather of concern in your nation.”
Dimon, who has spoken of the need for immigration reform for years, pushed back: “I judge they must alternate their skill to immigration,” Dimon said. “I’ve acknowledged it. What the hell else believe you desire me to claim?”
The day after Dimon’s comments, Trump sued JPMorgan and Dimon for $5 billion for closing his bank accounts after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. While Trump had warned he would sue JPMorgan days before Dimon’s comments at Davos, the implication was clear: Companies face retribution for perceived slights against the president.
“As soon as you discontinuance up an organization CEO, this man has the doubtless to tank your stock,” Tad DeHaven, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, said of the president. “Now we obtain seen this administration weaponize every conceivable lever of vitality it has.”
A CNBC poll of corporate leaders, conducted in the days following Pretti’s killing, found 56% said it is “unprecedented more nice looking” to speak out today when it comes to social and political causes. The CNBC Councils flash poll surveyed 34 companies about ICE’s presence in Minnesota.
Only one of the 34 corporate leaders surveyed reported they had spoken out publicly about the situation in Minneapolis, with about a third saying it was not relevant to their business, 21% saying they were still contemplating making public comments and 18% saying they were worried about backlash from the Trump administration.
Some of those companies remained silent even as they acknowledged the challenges were close to home: Among the surveyed businesses, about 15% said they were aware of company employees who had been personally impacted by ICE enforcement in the last 12 months.
In addition to the risk of retribution from the White House, companies have also become hesitant to speak out and anger a divided American public, said Eli Yokley, U.S. politics analyst for Morning Consult.
“A form of them are potentially essential relating to the submit-‘woke’ backlash that came no longer much less than culturally and establish just a few of them on their heels,” he said. “As soon as you would possibly perhaps be an particular particular person-facing stamp, the closing ingredient you could engage in is politics this present day in a world that is so polarized.
“People can react pretty fiercely,” Yokley acknowledged.
What’s more, the general public is potentially no longer united even in whether or no longer they judge company leaders must weigh in on Trump or his policies.
Forty percent of People whine CEOs who criticize Trump are acting responsibly, but only 28% whine they must talk out publicly after they disagree with the president’s policies, in step with a Morning Seek the advice of inquire of about 1,000 U.S. adults conducted on Jan. 20.
About 38% of respondents acknowledged they’d glance a firm much less favorably if a CEO praised Trump publicly, while 25% acknowledged they’d glance a firm more favorably, the inquire chanced on.
Around immigration enforcement, namely, People are equally divided on companies’ position.
The allotment of Morning Seek the advice of respondents who acknowledged companies must cooperate fully with ICE enforcement, 23%, develop into as soon as practically about equal to the allotment who acknowledged that companies must actively withstand, at 22%.
Demonstrators rob half in a rally and march at some stage in an “ICE Out” day of protest on Jan. 23, 2026, in Minneapolis.
Stephen Maturen | Getty Images
Close to home
Target, one of the most prominent Minneapolis-based companies, captures the shift in corporate responses to policy from Trump’s first term to his second.
In 2020, four days after George Floyd was killed by a police officer just a short distance from the big-box retailer’s headquarters, Target CEO Brian Cornell wrote an emotional statement, describing Floyd’s death as murder and naming other Black people who had been killed by law enforcement.
Cornell and Target pledged to take action in support of diversity and inclusion as the Black Lives Matter movement gained steam across the country in the wake of Floyd’s death.
“As a Target group, we’ve huddled, we’ve consoled, we’ve witnessed horrific scenes connected to what’s taking half in out now and wept that no longer ample is changing,” he wrote at the time. “And as a bunch we’ve vowed to face concern with objective.”
Compare that to the current environment. Earlier this month, after Minnesotan Renee Good was killed by an ICE agent, Target leaders did not make a public statement. Instead, the company circulated internal memos from the firm’s human resources chief, which acknowledged that employees are experiencing “a wide form of feelings” and stressing the company’s focus on employee and customer safety.
A FAQ linked in the memos said the retailer “doesn’t obtain cooperative agreements with ICE” and that federal agents, including ICE, have legal authority to enter its parking lots and guest-facing parts of stores without a warrant.
On Monday, Target’s incoming CEO Michael Fiddelke shared a video message with employees that more directly acknowledged current events, but stopped short of calling for ICE agents to leave the city or for a review of the two shooting deaths there. Fiddelke didn’t reference Good, Pretti or Trump by name.
“The violence and loss of life in our neighborhood is extremely painful,” he said. “I do know or no longer it is weighing heavily on lots of you at some stage in the nation, as it is with me.”
Target may have reason to be skittish: Its sales have been hit in recent years by boycotts from both Trump supporters and liberal critics who felt the retailer caved to Trump’s push against diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
But local leaders say the company has a responsibility to protect its community, too.
Over the past three weeks, a group of religious leaders in Minneapolis have called on the company to take a harsher stance against ICE action in Minneapolis, particularly after two Target employees in Minneapolis, both U.S. citizens, were taken by a team of ICE agents the day after Good’s death.
Target’s signature on the joint letter among other Minnesota companies didn’t go far enough, the group said.
“It be practically worse than silence, since it felt admire nothing,” said Martha Bardwell, pastor of Our Saviours Lutheran Church in Minneapolis.
“We all know that if Trump goes to hear to anybody, company leaders obtain lots of vitality,” Bardwell said. “We’re taking a survey to CEOs to be very clear and use the vitality they obtain got.”
Bardwell was part of a small group of Twin Cities clergy who met with Target CEO Cornell last week to encourage him to step up the company’s response. Those clergy said they left the meeting without any new pledges from Target.