Thomson Reuters faces shareholder vote over ICE contracts

Douglas Arthur, managing director and researcher in media & information services at Huber Research Partners, LLC, joins BNN Bloomberg to discuss Thomson Reuters

Content and technology company Thomson Reuters faces a shareholder vote at its annual meeting on Wednesday over its U.S. government contracts for services that some investors and employees say may help power the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants.

The resolution, filed by a British Columbia government workers union, seeks a review of the human rights implications of those contracts with U.S. agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

Among Toronto-based Thomson Reuters’ range of offerings are products and services sold to law enforcement. For instance, usaspending.gov, the federal government’s official database of its spending, shows a US$22.8 million contract set to have ended in May with the Department of Homeland Security that in part provided ICE with license plate reader data.

Other ongoing contracts with DHS, according to usaspending.gov, include one worth as much as $4.6 million through 2028 for “risk mitigation services” and another worth up to $3.6 million through 2027 for a “maritime analysis tool.”

The U.S. federal spending site said the contracts went to Thomson Reuters Special Services (TRSS), a unit of Thomson Reuters based in McLean, Virginia. According to its website, the unit’s products are meant to prevent financial crimes, identify foreign influence and help law enforcement and national security officials make sense of fragmented data.

A Thomson Reuters spokesperson declined to discuss details of specific contracts but said the company takes seriously the legality and legitimacy of its products.

“They are provided under strict contractual terms, subject to applicable law, and governed by strong safeguards that limit and monitor how our products and services are used. We are confident in these controls,” the spokesperson said. “Where potential misuse is identified, we act promptly and decisively, including suspending and/or canceling access when warranted.”

The company’s Reuters news organization is independent, operating separately from the other parts of Thomson Reuters’ business.

The resolution says Thomson Reuters’ products and data “are integral to ICE’s ability to track, detain and carry out the largest deportation in U.S. history.”

“We wholly dispute that claim. These allegations are without factual basis,” the Thomson Reuters spokesperson said.

Thomson Reuters opposes the proposal and said it already conducts human rights assessments to ensure that it meets United Nations standards for business conduct. In a securities filing, the company said its products help authorities investigate national security and public safety areas including child exploitation, human trafficking, narcotics and weapons trafficking and financial crime.

The proposal has been endorsed by a group of some Thomson Reuters employees calling themselves the “Committee to Restore Trust.” In April, Billie Little, an Oregon resident who had been employed by Thomson Reuters for legal publishing work, sued for wrongful termination.

In her complaint, which is pending in U.S. District Court in Portland, Oregon, Little argued that she was fired for raising questions about the company’s work with immigration authorities, and described herself as leader of the Committee to Restore Trust.

The Thomson Reuters spokesperson said of Little’s lawsuit, “We strongly dispute the allegations and intend to robustly defend the case. We take employee concerns seriously and provide clear channels for colleagues to raise issues, as outlined in our Code of Conduct.”

Top proxy advisers Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis have recommended votes against the resolution on Wednesday. ISS said it is not clear additional disclosure “would provide incremental benefit to shareholders.”

(Reporting by Ross Kerber; Editing by Daniel Wallis)