There was Meta Internal company communications obtained by WIRED indicate that the employee, who lost his job as a result of a series of layoffs on May 20, was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities in recent days.
A current employee posted about the incident this week on Meta’s internal immigration discussion forum. The initial post was marked “urgent” and flagged two Meta executives who focus on immigration and employee risk issues in an attempt to communicate the issue to them.
The current condition of the detained employee is unknown.
Meta spokesman Dave Arnold declined to comment on the matter. Representatives from ICE and the U.S. 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 communications reviewed by WIRED indicate that employees believe their former colleague was being held in El Paso, Texas, where the main U.S.-Mexico border crossing is located. On the other side is Ciudad Juárez, home to one of the largest U.S. consular offices in the region and a common destination for processing visa applications.
Many international workers at U.S. tech companies work on H-1B visas, which allow companies to hire highly skilled foreign workers. These visas are assigned to a specific employer. Workers who find recent jobs must adjust their immigration documents, sometimes intentionally leaving and re-entering the country.
WIRED was unable to confirm the employee’s nationality or the type of U.S. visa he was allowed to travel on.
The incident marks a infrequent known case of a corporate technology employee being detained since President Donald Trump launched a dramatically increased enforcement effort across the country early last year, prompting widespread criticism.
In May, Meta laid off nearly 10 percent of its workforce, or about 8,000 people, as part of an ongoing effort to enhance the company’s efficiency and offset the massive investments it has made in artificial intelligence infrastructure. Many workers on visas were among those laid off, according to employees familiar with the departures.
Meta’s petite community of workers has demanded that the company do more to protect immigrant workers and contractors at risk of detention or deportation by ICE, including lend a hand with legal fees and allowing workers to avoid offices on days when they fear immigration officials may be in the area. Faced with what some employees describe as a lack of support from Meta, employees have begun arranging financial and logistical assistance for colleagues in the U.S. dealing with immigration issues.
According to the Trump administration, immigration authorities were arresting tens of thousands of people a month, and as of early April, about 60,000 people were in detention centers researchers. Technical offices were not very common targets for raids. However, in January, immigration authorities arrested two workers heading to the Meta data center construction site.