Leadership: The ICE Test

Last week, I had to cancel a business trip.

I was supposed to go to Minneapolis, but the violence and instability created by Immigration and Customs Enforcement made the trip unviable. People told me to stay away from downtown. Companies have asked their teams to work from home. I was advised not to use Uber, since ICE was reportedly targeting black and brown drivers for random stops. Even basic logistics—getting from the airport to a hotel—felt uncertain in a way that had nothing to do with weather or traffic. It had everything to do with fear.

I largely stay away from writing about politics. That is, of course, until politics refuses to stay away from me. What’s happening in Minneapolis isn’t a policy debate playing out on cable news. It’s something that’s reshaping daily life. And in moments like this, it becomes an unusually clear test for leadership. It’s something business leaders can learn from.

The ICE Invasion

Over the past year, ICE’s interior enforcement has expanded dramatically. Between January and December of 2025, the agency arrested well over 300,000 people nationwide and deported a similar number under the current administration’s broadened enforcement mandate. Detention levels surged to historic highs, with tens of thousands of people held at once—often cited between 65,000 and 69,000 at peak points—many of whom have no criminal convictions.

Inside those facilities, the outcomes have been grim. At least 32 people died in ICE custody in 2025, the highest annual total since the bureau was created. Additional deaths have been reported this year. Investigations have repeatedly pointed to overcrowding, delayed medical care, poor conditions, and slow emergency responses as contributing factors. ICE itself classifies many of these deaths as medical or self-inflicted, but external advocates argue that the numbers likely understate the harm when systemic neglect is involved.

Outside detention centers, the violence has been more visible. Since mid-2025, federal immigration agents, including ICE officers, have shot at people at least 16 times during enforcement operations, resulting in multiple injuries and four confirmed deaths.

These statistics describe the system. But it’s names that reveal the truth.

Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was summarily executed in the street. The coroner has ruled her death a homicide. Video footage and eyewitness accounts have raised serious questions about the justification for lethal force. The administration deemed her a domestic terrorist. Whatever explanation is ultimately offered, the image of a mother killed during an enforcement action has become a defining symbol of this moment.

Shortly afterward, a local activist, Patty O’Keefe, was arrested and detained while following ICE agents. The officer allegedly taunted her by saying, “You guys got to stop obstructing us. That’s why that lesbian bitch is dead.” I debated whether to share this quote verbatim. But softening it feels like a betrayal. The level of cruelty and contempt we’re seeing from our own government should not be sugarcoated. 

Since I originally wrote these words, another young man was murdered in cold blood while cameras were rolling. Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a nurse with the Veterans Administration, was tackled by ICE agents, disarmed of his weapon, and restrained. Then they shot him ten times while he was on his knees.

This is the storm that Minneapolis is living through.

The Minneapolis Reaction

Last Friday, thousands of Minnesotans stayed home from work and school in what amounted to a general strike. Across the Twin Cities, hundreds of small businesses closed their doors in protest of ICE’s presence and tactics. It was an unusually broad act of civic refusal—quiet in some places, loud in others—but unmistakable.

Larger companies took a quieter approach.

Minneapolis has more large company headquarters per capita than any city in the country. Seventeen Fortune 500 companies are based in the Twin Cities, including Target, Thrivent, General Mills, U.S. Bank, and 3M. Many of them have been longtime Jump clients.

By and large, these companies had been publicly silent about what’s happening in their hometown. On Sunday, they released a joint statement calling for de-escalation of the situation. They stopped short of condemning the recent killings. I don’t blame them. Speaking publicly in moments like this can introduce legal risk, political backlash, and unintended consequences for employees. Moreover, the current regime in Washington has already demonstrated a monstrous capacity for retribution. 

Behind the scenes, though, many of these companies have been working tirelessly to make sure their teams and their communities are safe—independent of anyone’s citizenship status. They’ve adjusted work policies, offered support quietly, and focused on protecting rather than posturing. That kind of leadership rarely makes headlines, but it matters deeply to the people on the receiving end.

By and large, Americans are good people. In a New York Times/Siena poll released last week, 61 percent of respondents said that the tactics used by ICE have gone too far. What’s more disturbing, though, is that 26% said ICE’s tactics are about right, and 11% said that they have not gone far enough. That 37 percent are on board with what we’re seeing is astonishing. It also reveals something uncomfortable about how human judgment works and what it means to be a leader.

Your Brain Is Playing Tricks on You

In 2017, Don Vaughn and a team at Baylor College of Medicine studied how empathy changes when people observe the pain of those they perceive as outsiders. Neuroscience has long shown that watching another person experience pain activates the same neural regions as experiencing pain ourselves. Empathy, at the biological level, is real.

In the Baylor study, participants watched a video of a hand being stabbed with a needle. On the screen, the video included a label identifying the hand owner’s religion—Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and so on. When the hand was labeled as belonging to someone of a different religion, participants’ empathic responses dropped significantly. Their brains quite literally cared less. Subsequent studies confirmed the pattern. We empathize more with people we perceive as part of our own ingroup and grow numb to the suffering of those we label as outsiders.

This bias likely helped our species survive when we lived in small bands competing for scarce resources. In a diverse, interconnected world, it’s maladaptive. And powerful people understand this. They know how to exploit it.

There is no better illustration than “First They Came,” the famous confessional poem by German pastor Martin Niemöller. Reflecting on his own silence and complicity during the Holocaust, Niemöller wrote…

“First they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the Socialists

And I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists

And I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews

And I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me

And there was no one left to speak out for me.”

Our focus on our own ingroup makes our brains play tricks on us. Of course, that depends on how big we believe our ingroup to be. And that belief turns out to be one of the clearest indicators of leadership maturity.

The Leadership Test

There are four big factors that signal your level of leadership development: self-awareness, social awareness, construct awareness, and sphere of concern. That last one is all about how big your ingroup is. Some of us have very small spheres of concern: we’re largely egocentric. Others have developed to the point where they identify with a larger team or tribe: they’re ethnocentric. Some of us have developed a near-universal sphere of concern: we’re truly world-centric. These are often the greatest leaders. Tell me who you care about, and I’ll tell you what level of leader you are. 

Which brings us back to the 37 percent. People who approve of ICE’s actions aren’t necessarily stupid or evil. More often, they have a diminished sphere of concern and a corresponding lack of empathy for people they perceive as outsiders.

It’s also a test for your own leadership. If you’ve seen what ICE has been doing, if you’ve watched the footage from Minneapolis, if you’ve watched Renee Good’s execution, and you aren’t deeply disturbed, it likely means your brain is playing tricks on you.

It also means that you’re not nearly as great a leader as you think you are.

If, on the other hand, you feel unsettled by the direction we’re heading, there’s reason for hope. Not just for you, but for the people who look to you for leadership. And maybe even for this country.

Be the Change

Protest matters. Public pressure matters. But as Gandhi taught us, we need to be the change we wish to see in the world. On that front, the people of Minneapolis are offering a powerful example.

In south Minneapolis, a church has transformed itself into what’s effectively a shadow supermarket. Hundreds of volunteers have packed and delivered grocery boxes to families too afraid to leave their homes. More than 12,000 boxes have already gone out the door.

Across the city, mutual-aid and rapid-response networks are coordinating food, rides, childcare, rent assistance, and medical support so families can keep living without exposing themselves to risk. Community members are running volunteer patrols to warn neighbors, document activity, and reduce panic. Legal organizations are staffing detention hotlines and sharing know-your-rights information so families can get help quickly when someone disappears.

Restaurants and small businesses have stepped into a civic role, organizing food drives, donating proceeds, and offering warm gathering places when people need them most.

This is what the compassion of a community looks like.

The Test of a Roof

I didn’t go to Minneapolis last week, but I did get to work.

Monday was Martin Luther King Day. As we do every year, Jump held a service day at St. Anthony’s, a nonprofit in San Francisco that provides meals, medical care, and dignity to people living on the margins. We served meals to 1628 people. I listened to U2’s “Pride (In the Name of Love).” And I read Dr. Seuss’s The Sneetches to my son, just as I’ve done every MLK Day since he was very young.

“The star-bellied sneetches had bellies with stars. The plain-bellied sneetches have none upon thars…”

I also worked on a charitable match for Jump. Last year was a good year for our company. Everyone received a sizable bonus. We need to share that good fortune. Jump announced a charitable match: for every dollar a Jumpster donates to organizations fighting for civil liberties and immigrant rights, Jump will triple it.

Our list includes the American Civil Liberties Union, which has spent more than a century defending the Constitution, using litigation and advocacy to uphold the rule of law when state power drifts toward authoritarian abuse.

The National Immigration Law Center fights in courts and legislatures to protect low-income immigrants, ensuring that civil rights don’t disappear simply because of where someone was born.

United We Dream is the nation’s largest immigrant youth-led organization, mobilizing a new generation to demand dignity, safety, and a future that isn’t governed by fear.

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights organizes, educates, and defends immigrant communities, pairing on-the-ground support with an unflinching push for a more humane national policy.

The Immigrant Defense Project works at the intersection of criminal and immigration law, challenging a system that quietly erodes due process by turning minor contact with the state into exile.

And for Minneapolis, our list includes the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota. The center provides free, high-quality legal representation to immigrants and refugees, defending due process and human dignity when federal enforcement turns fear into policy.

Most importantly, I’m working to help our team make meaning of what they’re seeing. Your teams need that, too. That will no doubt be hard. But leadership isn’t just about how you show up in good times. The test of a roof is when it’s raining.

This is Us

My parents are from India. I don’t have dark skin, but my brother does. I was born in the United States. I don’t need a visa to live here, but my cousins do. I grew up here. I don’t speak with a foreign accent, but my father does. I’m a straight man. I’m not going to get harassed for my sexuality, but I have a best friend who’s gay. I won’t get randomly picked up in a raid if I go to Home Depot. ICE won’t knock down my front door without a warrant. I don’t worry about being apprehended and disappeared.

But that does not mean that I am safe.

None of us is truly safe when the boundaries of state power start to shift this way. When a government normalizes cruelty toward an outgroup, it is rehearsing a broader move—testing how much force it can use, how little accountability it needs, and how many people will look away. History shows that those boundaries rarely stay neatly contained. They expand. They migrate. And eventually they reach people who once believed themselves insulated by citizenship, status, skin color, or success.

This isn’t intended to be a political piece. It’s a moral one. It’s a lesson about leadership. And it’s a love letter to my friends in Minneapolis. Stay strong. We’re with you. The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.