Union Pressures Thomson Reuters to Rethink Selling Tools to ICE

As the expiry date nears for two of Thomson Reuters’ contracts with the United States Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, one B.C. union is sounding the alarm over human rights concerns.

Thomson Reuters is a Toronto-based technology company that owns Reuters News Agency and the legal research tool Westlaw. It has several contracts providing the U.S. agencies access to its investigative research tools.

One US$5.9-million contract, which gives the Department of Homeland Security access to Thomson Reuters’ criminal investigation database CLEAR, is set to expire this month.

A second, US$22.8-million contract, which gives Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, access to a “law enforcement investigative database,” is set to expire at the end of May.

With a market cap of US$39 billion, Thomson Reuters is majority-controlled by Woodbridge Co. Ltd.

The BC General Employees’ Union holds a small share of the company. The union has been raising concerns about the potential of Thomson Reuters’ investigative tools to surveil and track people.

“If a company is unable to manage and mitigate the risk of a particular product or software, investors should begin to question whether the underlying contract is appropriate at all,” said BCGEU president Paul Finch in an email.

He said the union is continuing to pressure the company to ensure its technology and artificial intelligence policies are upholding human rights.

Thomson Reuters did not respond to requests for comment. Company CEO Steve Hasker told the Logic in 2023 that Thomson Reuters started working with ICE before the current surge in deportations, and that the company was then “swept up in a broader set of problems to which we have not contributed.”

As ICE’s aggressive mass deportation campaign continues, calls are growing from within for Thomson Reuters to cut ties with the immigration enforcement agency. A group of employees told the New York Times this month they don’t want the company to keep providing surveillance tools to ICE.

They spoke out largely from Minnesota, the state where an aggressive ICE campaign this winter resulted in more than 4,000 people being arrested. Two Minneapolis protesters, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, were also shot dead by federal agents.

Meanwhile, the United Nations’ top human rights official has condemned the agency’s “abuse and denigration” of people suspected of being undocumented migrants, as ICE agents violently arrest, detain and deport people.

U.S. courts have ruled several of the agency’s arrests unlawful. At least 32 people died in ICE custody last year, and people continue to die under the agency’s watch this year, including 42-year-old Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres, 55-year old Geraldo Lunas Campos and 34-year-old Heber Sánchez Domínguez.

Thomson Reuters has several contracts with ICE, providing databases, data analysis and risk mitigation services.

West Publishing Corp., a Minnesota-based business owned by Thomson Reuters, also has contracts to provide an investigative software called CLEAR to the Department of Homeland Security. That department oversees several agencies including ICE, the Transportation Security Administration and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

For nearly six years, the BCGEU has been pressuring Thomson Reuters to consider the human rights impacts of its contracts with ICE.

“As a Canadian labour union and long-term investor, our goal is to grow long-term sustainable value for our members,” Finch said.

“One of the most effective ways to pursue that goal is to exercise our rights as shareholders, using shareholder engagement to influence corporate direction.”

On May 19, 2020, the union released a report to other shareholders calling for the company to properly assess the risks of working with the agency.

The union is largely concerned about the human rights implications of CLEAR, which consolidates public and personal information about individuals into a searchable database.

The software is often used to aid criminal and legal investigations and, according to the company’s website, now features data “analytics powered by AI machine learning.”

In the report to investors, the BCGEU says the agency uses CLEAR to track and arrest immigrants.

That year, the BCGEU launched a shareholder proposal calling for the Thomson Reuters board to review the human rights impacts by users of its products and ensure the company adheres to the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, a global standard for preventing business risks to human rights.

The company aligned its human rights policies with those standards in 2022.

In 2025, the union released another brief to investors highlighting the effect of Thomson Reuters’ contracts with ICE.

“Through such contracts, Thomson Reuters plays a role enabling the surveillance, imprisonment, and deportation of hundreds of thousands of immigrants each year,” the brief said.

In the brief, the BCGEU says CLEAR gives ICE access to information including social media posts, live cellphone records, arrest records, health-care provider information, real-time geolocation data and licence plate recognition.

The union said Thomson Reuters employees have been embedded within ICE offices, working with agents to provide personal information on targets.

It launched another shareholder proposal asking Thomson Reuters to ensure the company’s artificial intelligence policies are also aligned with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

Approximately 20 per cent of the independent shareholders supported the proposal, according to the union. But because Woodbridge Co. holds a majority stake in Thomson Reuters, the result of the vote did not force the company to take any action.

The BCGEU’s Finch said the union will keep working to make sure that companies in its investment portfolio commit to responsible conduct.

“Our work doesn’t end when a company makes a commitment,” Finch said. “We keep following up to make sure a company follows through.”