By: Olivia Sherman, Peak Associate
Content warning: mentions of gun violence.
The United States’ Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has enacted detentions and mass deportations against undocumented immigrants for over two decades — this has surged in frequency since President Donald Trump’s second term began. 2025 was the deadliest year for people in ICE custody since 2004. This January saw ICE commit two gun killings. More than three people were also shot in 2025 by ICE. 32 people died in detention centres in 2025, and at least six more so far this year. Their families say this was due to health complications from neglected healthcare and abuse. Human rights advocates and immigration lawyers have also reported inadequate healthcare and sanitary conditions. In January, protests in Minneapolis, where two killings were filmed and uploaded online, spread across the US, and garnered worldwide media attention and solidarity.
Anti-ICE sentiments have also grown in Canada, as has the spotlight on Canadian companies aiding, benefitting from, and collaborating with ICE and its increasing number of detention centres across the US. One of these is Hootsuite, a Vancouver-based marketing company. On January 30, demonstrators arrived at Hootsuite headquarters to protest against the company’s involvement with ICE. Despite freezing temperatures and heavy rain, around 500 protestors arrived at Hootsuite’s Mount Pleasant headquarters, blocking 5th Avenue and carrying signs down Main Street to raise awareness.
Hootsuite describes themselves as a “platform to manage, monitor, and measure” social media presences and they have a contract with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE and its activities. It’s worth up to $2.8 million and has transactions as recent as September 2025 for Hootsuite’s services. Hootsuite CEO Irina Novoselsky stated in late January that Hootsuite provides “insights that drive better decisions and accountability, without endorsing specific actions or policies.”
In an internal call to Hootsuite employees, obtained by The Globe and Mail, Novoselsky said the company “did nothing wrong” and that “ICE is a customer within the public affairs group.” In the same call, Novoselsky also claimed reports on their collaboration with ICE are “fake news.”
The January 30 protest was organized by Democracy Rising, a grassroots Vancouver-based anti-fascist organization. Fascism is a right-wing populist movement, often relying on the scapegoating of marginalized groups to carry out authoritarian acts. Historically, these acts consist of censoring the media, expanding territory through annexation, dehumanizing chosen scapegoats through fearmongering, and mass imprisonment and eradication of perceived enemies to the regime.
The Peak spoke with Democracy Rising co-founder Kalifi Ferretti-Gallon, who says the community-led organization is “firmly rooted in our backyard.
“We have a community that we want to protect and we want to engage [ . . . ] If you have offices in Vancouver, you’re part of this community.” Although the scope of Canadian companies collaborating with ICE is nationwide, Ferretti-Gallon notes that there are local avenues for action and change. Many of the companies working with ICE have offices in Vancouver, such as Quebec-based security firm GardaWorld. They provide security guards to an ICE facility dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” for its human rights violations and the hundreds of undocumented disappearances of its detainees.
Independent Canadian journalist Rachel Gilmore has documented several more companies working with DHS and ICE, including IT firm CGI and media company Thomson Reuters. Both have offices in Vancouver. Canadian real estate agency Avison Young is currently selling two of their US-based warehouses to ICE for processing facilities, as the Globe and Mail reported.
Democracy Rising wrote an open letter to Hootsuite, condemning their continued involvement with ICE and stating their concern “that ICE has become the enforcement arm of a fascist regime” with inhumane conditions in facilities, including accounts of documented sexual abuse and deaths in custody. The letter calls for an end to all ICE contracts and a commitment to not aid in further “authoritarian enforcement.” This would align with Hootsuite’s own commitments to “equality and anti-racism, community and environmental well being, and disaster response,” the letter points out.
“Anything less will remain a stain on Canadian history,” the open letter states. “Canadian businesses have no place working with them.”
As of the interview in late February, Ferretti-Gallon states that Democracy Rising has not seen a response to their letter, and has “not really seen any kind of action on them, on their social media or in any kind of official public capacity.”
BC Green Party leader Emily Lowan attended the January 30 rally, calling for action against corporations benefiting from ICE. Lowan has also been a critic of the Jim Pattison Group and the company’s recent agreement to sell a warehouse they own in Virginia to be used as an ICE processing facility. The Jim Pattison Group is the second-largest privately held company in Canada, with ownership spanning from broadcasting, agriculture, car dealerships, outdoor signage and advertisements, and multiple grocery chains, including Save-On Foods and Nesters Markets.
While the company stated it wasn’t aware of the intended purpose of the facility after its initial agreement to ICE, they still received public backlash. On January 30, the Jim Pattison Group made a single-sentence announcement that the transaction “will not be proceeding.” A few hours after the Hootsuite protest, protestors reconvened outside the Jim Pattison Group offices in a celebratory demonstration. Also hosted by Democracy Rising, the protest outside Hootsuite was followed by another one on February 21.
Ferretti-Gallon formed Democracy Rising last year with her partner in solidarity with “nationally coordinated protests that were happening in the US.” The No Kings rallies in the US were a response to Trump’s second term and his authoritarian administration. “We’re trying not just to use this organization as a vehicle for protest, but also to build community, because we are realizing that’s the best way to fight fascism,” Ferretti-Gallon said.
The violence seen conducted by ICE is a symptom of a rising growth of right-wing authoritarianism across the globe, and isn’t unique to the US. Canada’s recent Bill C-12, or the Strengthening Canada’s Immigration Systems and Borders Act, is one example. The bill, recently passed by the House of Commons, is not yet law but could allow the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to change, cancel, or suspend immigration documents, increase Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) authority over who is allowed in, and suspend applications if it is in the “public interest” to do so. Several migrant advocacy groups have spoken out against this bill, including the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, who are in a coalition with Democracy Rising and staged their own protest outside Toronto’s Hootsuite offices on February 26, which also called to reject the bill.
Ferretti-Gallon explained this rise in border security is directly linked to recent threats of annexation by Trump.
“Fascism really begets fascist behaviour.”
— Kalifi Ferretti-Gallon, Democracy Rising Co-founder
Saying Canada is increasing their “strongman behaviour” at the border in response to these threats. “We are calling on these offices and these kinds of entities, including public institutions like US embassies and the CBSA, to stop directly supporting ICE, stop profiting from ICE, stop facilitating and hosting ICE.”
