No Human Rights Review for Thomson Reuters’ Big Contracts with ICE

Thomson Reuters shareholders voted down one B.C. union’s call for the company to review human rights impacts of its contracts with the U.S. agency Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

The Toronto-based technology company owns Reuters news agency and the legal research tool Westlaw. It also offers risk mitigation services, a criminal investigative database called CLEAR and licence plate recognition technology.

Thomson Reuters and its subsidiary, West Publishing Co., have several contracts with ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Those contracts provide the agencies with access to the company’s investigative tools.

The BC General Employees’ Union, or BCGEU, a minority shareholder, has pressured Thomson Reuters to consider the human rights impacts of its contracts for years.

And amid the United States’ aggressive and violent deportation campaign, the union is renewing its call for the company to consider the risk of its contracts with ICE. The agency faces significant pushback for its agents’ often violent efforts to detain and deport people.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said in an email that ICE is committed to achieving the United States’ mandate to clear a “backlog” of undocumented persons.

“Like other law enforcement agencies, ICE employs various forms of technology while respecting civil liberties and privacy interests,” the spokesperson said.

At a shareholder meeting Wednesday, the BCGEU put forth a proposal that said lawsuits accusing ICE of unlawful and improper detentions, due process violations and surveillance of citizens expose the company to compounding legal, reputational and governance risks.

“Investors have told us they will keep engaging on this issue — and so will we,” BCGEU’s head of shareholder engagement, Emma Pullman, said in an email.

The proposal asked the company for an independent assessment of its products’ role in “adverse human rights impacts.”

Voting results filed with the Canadian Securities Administrators show the proposal was rejected, with only about 3.7 per cent of votes in support and 95.4 per cent of votes against.

The union estimates that’s about 15 per cent of the independent shareholders’ votes. The company is majority-controlled by Woodbridge Co. Ltd., a private holding company that also owns the Globe and Mail.

But even if the proposal were to win the majority of the shareholder vote, it would not be legally binding.

Company denies it aids surveillance

Thomson Reuters did not respond to requests for comment. But in a blog post last April, the company denied that its investigative solutions are surveillance tools.

It said all the data provided to law enforcement through CLEAR is either public or licensable “directly from third parties.” It said CLEAR does not contain information about immigration status or information that law enforcement would typically need a warrant to obtain.

The blog post added that Thomson Reuters’ licence plate recognition software provides access to randomly collected photographs and is not capable of tracking real-time locations of a vehicle.

The department and former Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem are specifically facing a lawsuit that claims agents used surveillance technology — including facial recognition and licence plate readers — to threaten legal observers in Maine.

Thomson Reuters said in the blog post it is aligned with the United Nations’ framework on how businesses can uphold human rights, and assessed its products’ impacts on human rights in 2025. It says it plans to publish findings on its website this year.

“We are confident the risk indicators applied in this assessment are robust and relevant today. We plan to publish key findings on our website later this year,” the blog post said.

“When we think about the potential human rights impacts of how our products and services are used, we listen carefully — to both external voices and those of our own employees.”

Billie Little, a former legal editor at the company, is calling for more transparency about how ICE uses CLEAR, licence plate recognition software and other investigative tools. Earlier this year, Little helped organize an internal committee that flagged to management its tools might be used in unlawful ways.

She said the company did not answer — and still has not answered — employee questions about how the software is being used by ICE.

“The company is not being transparent about how the product is being used,” she said. “Without transparency you can't have trust with the employees or with the shareholders.”

Little was fired in March, after the committee penned a letter to management expressing concerns with how ICE was using Thomson Reuters’ products. She has filed a wrongful termination lawsuit in an Oregon court, asserting she was fired over her organizing.

While Thomson Reuters did not respond to requests for comment, the company denied the allegation to a journalist at U.S.-based National Public Radio.

Little said she was disappointed to hear the BCGEU’s proposal had been voted down. She pointed out the 2025 human rights assessment was conducted before ICE started its large-scale campaign in Minnesota, and has not yet been published.

“The company is relying on this assessment and saying, ‘There's nothing to see here,’” she said.

Little added that the family of the late publisher Roy Thomson, which owns Thomson Reuters by way of Woodbridge Co., holds the power to ensure the company is more transparent about its products.

“They choose not to use that power by supporting these shareholder resolutions for expanded transparency,” she said. “They shouldn't be exempt from media scrutiny on this issue.”

Meanwhile Pullman said the BCGEU is committed to pushing for further changes.

“Human rights impact assessments can be powerful risk management tools, or they can be box-ticking exercises,” Pullman said. “Thomson Reuters says it wants to do the right thing. Releasing fuller disclosures and a specific evaluation of its software's high-risk use cases would prove it.”

The United Nations’ top human rights official has decried the agency’s “abuse and denigration” of people suspected of being undocumented migrants. And records obtained by U.S.-based news non-profit the Marshall Project show ICE has detained at least 500 children and small babies.

U.S. courts have ruled several of the agency’s arrests unlawful, and at least 18 people have died this year under the agency’s watch.

Union’s tally of deals with ICE

According to the BCGEU, the company’s contracts with the agency currently total more than US$40 million. The union expects Thomson Reuters will continue to provide services to ICE and the Department of Homeland Security.

One US$5.9-million contract, which gave the Department of Homeland Security access to CLEAR, expired in March. The company started a new $2.4-million contract for the same service at the end of that month.

A second, US$22.8-million contract, which gave ICE access to a “law enforcement investigative database,” expired at the end of May. The agency solicited bids for a new investigations tool this year.