A former Meta employee who lost their job during a round of layoffs on May 20 is said to have been detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in recent days, according to communications inside the company seen by WIRED.
A current employee posted about the incident on an internal Meta messaging board for immigration topics this week. The initial post was marked as “urgent” and tagged two Meta executives who focus on immigration issues and employee risk, in an attempt to escalate the issue to them.
The current status of the detained worker is unknown.
A spokesperson for Meta, Dave Arnold, declined to comment on the record. Representatives from ICE and the US Department of Homeland Security did not provide comment in time for publication. It is unclear whether the employee was detained by ICE, Customs and Border Protection, or another agency.
Internal messages reviewed by WIRED indicate employees believe their former colleague was being detained in El Paso, Texas, where there is a major US-Mexico border crossing. On the other side is Ciudad Juárez, home to one of the largest US consular offices in the region and a common destination for visa processing.
Many international employees at US tech companies work on H-1B visas, which allow firms to hire highly skilled foreign workers. These visas are tied to a specific employer. Workers who secure a new job need to adjust their immigration paperwork, sometimes by intentionally leaving and reentering the country.
WIRED was unable to confirm the worker’s nationality or what type of US visa they may have traveled on.
The incident marks a rare known instance of a corporate tech worker being taken into immigration custody since President Donald Trump launched dramatically escalated enforcement efforts across the country early last year, sparking widespread criticism.
In May, Meta cut nearly 10 percent of its workforce, or roughly 8,000 people, as part of its ongoing efforts to make the company more efficient and offset the massive investments it is making into AI infrastructure. Numerous workers on visas were among those let go, according to employees familiar with the departures.
A small community of Meta employees has demanded that the company do more to protect immigrant employees and contractors at risk of being detained or deported by ICE, including helping to pay for legal fees and allowing workers to avoid offices on days they fear immigration officials might be in the area. Amid what some employees describe as a lack of support from Meta, workers have begun organizing financial and logistical aid for colleagues in the US dealing with immigration issues.
Under the Trump administration, immigration authorities have been arresting tens of thousands of people a month, with about 60,000 people in detention centers as of early April, according to researchers. Tech offices have not been much of a target for raids. But in January, immigration authorities arrested two workers traveling to a Meta data center construction site.
