Boycott Whole Foods: Oppose a Surveillance State and the Kidnapping of our Immigrant Neighbors

By Jean Moses and Lisa Hesselgesser

SURJ Bay Area’s recent protest at an Oakland Whole Foods store might have seemed confusing to some shoppers. After all, what do buying groceries have to do with surveillance and ICE? The answer lies in the grocery chain’s parent company, Amazon, whose cloud services are being used by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). 

Members of the SURJ Bay Resistance Action Pod, SURF (Showing Up to Resist Fascism), outside an Oakland Whole Foods store with protest signs and a banner that reads Immigrant Rights are Human Rights.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) GovCloud is recognized as the backbone of the DHS and ICE’s ability to surveille, kidnap, and deport our immigrant neighbors. A 2018 report commissioned by Mijente, the National Immigration Project, and the Immigrant Defense Project found that AWS hosts several of DHS’s major immigration-related databases and operations, including all core data systems for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and biometric data for roughly 230 million individuals — including fingerprints, face records, and iris scans — which are playing a growing role in its indiscriminate and often violent immigration enforcement.

In addition, AWS GovCloud enables the nefarious tech company, Palantir, whose Investigative Case Management software also compiles and analyzes surveillance information for use by the DHS and ICE. As the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) points out in their article, How does Palantir support genocide and war?, “Palantir is the most dangerous tech company you may not have heard of. It uses artificial intelligence to weaponize our data against us. Built with CIA funding to support the U.S. “war on terror,” Palantir is a weapons company disguised as a software start-up.” In addition to supporting ICE, Palantir also works closely with the U.S. military and Palantir software is being employed by Israel for its genocide on Gaza and Washington’s war on Iran. 

According to the Business Insider, Palantir "does not specifically say how much it spends on AWS (or Microsoft cloud services). However, it does say that over the next five-plus years, it has about $1.5 billion in "noncancellable purchase commitments," which it says is primarily related to cloud hosting services.".

Every consumer dollar spent on the products of Amazon and its subsidiaries—including Whole Foods—helps Amazon expand AWS GovCloud. Watchdog organizations including the ACLU, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and AFSC warn that AWS GovCloud is undermining the privacy of all of us.

In a 2018 Wired Magazine interview, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said, “I feel that society develops an immune response eventually to the bad uses of new technology, but it takes time,”  In February 2026, a public backlash or “immune response” successfully stopped Amazon Ring and Flock Systems from signing a contract to channel all the private data from Ring customers into the Flock surveillance system.

We will not tolerate Amazon’s contribution to a surveillance state where kidnapping, family separation, detention camps, and arbitrary deportation are allowed. Nor can we support technologies that are used for war and genocide abroad. Join us and boycott Whole Foods and Amazon!

Members of the SURJ Bay Resistance Action Pod, SURF (Showing Up to Resist Fascism), hold up protest signs outside an Oakland Whole Foods store.