She Raised Concerns About Her Company’s Contracts With ICE. Then She Lost Her Job

During Billie Little’s roughly two decades working at Thomson Reuters, she felt pride in the company, which is known for its legal database Westlaw, its media company Reuters, and its role as a major data broker.

But as masked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents swarmed Minneapolis early this year and the country reeled from federal agents fatally shooting Renée Macklin Good and Alex Pretti, Little and other colleagues grew alarmed that ICE agents could be abusing Thomson Reuters investigative tools that provide vast quantities of personal data on people including license plate information.

Little, who worked in legal publishing, was part of a committee of employees that sent a letter to company management in February flagging that ICE could be using Thomson Reuters products unlawfully and asking for greater transparency about the company’s oversight of its contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and ICE. Soon after their effort was made public in the media, however, Little was fired from her role.

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Little is now suing the company, arguing that her dismissal violated a law in her home state of Oregon that bars employers from firing whistleblowers.

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Thomson Reuters, which is headquartered in Toronto, is also facing pressure from shareholders over its ICE contracts.

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Not all employees had been aware that Thomson Reuters has held tens of millions of dollars in contracts with ICE in the last several years for its data and investigative tools.

One of the key products Thomson Reuters sells to law enforcement agencies, including ICE, is called CLEAR, which aggregates billions of data points on individuals from public and proprietary records, as well as social media. CLEAR’s platform also includes images from a network of license plate readers. ICE has a nearly $5 million contract with Thomson Reuters from May 2025 for “license plate reader data to enhance investigations for potential arrest, seizure and forfeiture.”

Little’s own work at the company had nothing to do with CLEAR. But she had heard over the years that it was being used to go after human traffickers or child exploitation crimes.

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The company has previously asserted that CLEAR was not intended to be used to help deport undocumented immigrants with no criminal records.

A Thomson Reuters description of CLEAR that no longer appears on the company’s website but was archived by the WayBack Machine says it is “not designed for use for mass illegal immigration inquiries or for deporting non-criminal undocumented persons and non-citizens.”

Company documents from as recently as February that outline the terms for using CLEAR say that vehicle registration data shouldn’t be used for immigration enforcement.

But as news stories showed dramatic increases in the number of immigrants arrested without any criminal history, Little said she began to doubt the company’s line.

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She and other employees formed a group they called the “Committee to Restore Trust,” which sent a letter to management on Feb. 20 that was signed by about 170 employees. Some 27,000 people work for the company globally.

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Five days after the Times article was published, Little was summoned to a meeting with HR where she was told she was being investigated for violating confidentiality and data sharing policies, according to her lawsuit. A few days later she was fired. The lawsuit says she was told she violated the company’s code of conduct but she did not receive written findings from an investigation or an explanation of which provision the company alleges she violated.

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