Employee Alleges Firing After Protesting ICE Contracts

Billie Little says nearly 20 years at Thomson Reuters ended after she and colleagues raised concerns about the company’s work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Little, who worked in legal publishing, joined roughly 170 coworkers in a group called the Committee to Restore Trust. On Feb. 20 the committee sent management a letter requesting greater transparency and an all-hands discussion about oversight of Department of Homeland Security and ICE contracts, warning that Thomson Reuters products — especially the CLEAR investigative platform, which aggregates billions of data points and can include license plate reader images — could enable activity that violates constitutional protections and local sanctuary laws. Employees had learned the company held tens of millions of dollars in contracts with ICE in recent years, including an almost $5 million contract from May 2025 for license plate reader data, and colleagues in the Twin Cities reported fears of being tracked, identified from vehicles, or having their families threatened after ICE operations and reports that agents seemed to know protesters’ names and addresses. Little said she feared CLEAR might be used more broadly than company descriptions imply and that its integration with other tools used by ICE increased those risks. Thomson Reuters says its tools support legitimate investigations into child exploitation, human trafficking, narcotics and other public safety matters, and that it maintains contractual safeguards to ensure lawful use. The company has told investors and the public that CLEAR was not intended for mass immigration inquiries or deporting non-criminal undocumented people and that its terms include limits on using vehicle registration data for immigration enforcement. After the committee’s concerns were reported by the Minnesota Star Tribune and The New York Times in March, Little says she was called to an HR meeting, told she was being investigated for alleged confidentiality and data-sharing violations, and was fired a few days later. Her lawsuit states she received no written findings or specific explanation of which conduct policies she supposedly breached and that she had no prior negative reviews or discipline. Little has sued under Oregon whistleblower protections seeking reinstatement, lost wages and compensatory damages; her attorney says she reported conduct she reasonably believed to be unlawful and was terminated for doing so. The employee protests have also spurred shareholder action: the British Columbia General Employees’ Union, a Thomson Reuters shareholder, filed a proposal calling for an independent evaluation of whether company products may contribute to adverse human rights impacts when used by law enforcement and immigration authorities. The Thomson Reuters board opposes the proposal, noting the company completed an independent human rights impact assessment in 2025 and plans to release key findings, while the union argues that assessment predates recent events and employee complaints and that further review is not duplicative. Privacy and civil liberties advocates have for years warned about governments purchasing detailed data from brokers without stronger guardrails, saying that aggregating public and proprietary data can allow inferences and access to personal information that traditionally would require a warrant. Reporting that CLEAR has been integrated with other tools used by ICE has heightened those concerns, and civil liberties groups say federal agents have sometimes used information such as license plates to identify and intimidate observers, prompting lawsuits alleging First Amendment and other violations. Former and current employees told reporters they felt stonewalled or dissatisfied by the company’s response; one former employee said they left in part because of how leadership handled concerns and feared retaliation. Little says she feels a moral obligation to pursue the lawsuit and frames the case as about protecting privacy, ensuring law enforcement respects constitutional limits, and defending civil liberties beyond her own termination.