Reuters staffer fired after raising alarm over company providing services to ICE
A longtime employee who worked for a division of the conglomerate that owns the Reuters News Agency claims she was dismissed from her job for raising the alarm within the company that it was providing services to the Department of Homeland Security that were being used illegally.
According to NPR reporting, Billie Little, who worked in legal publishing for the company's Westlaw division, was fired shortly after she joined colleagues in flagging potential unlawful use of Thomson Reuters products by ICE.
Little became alarmed after witnessing ICE enforcement activities in Minneapolis. In late January, she followed news reports about U.S. citizens detained by ICE and heightened tensions in the Twin Cities area following shootings. She also heard disturbing accounts from colleagues working at the Thomson Reuters office in Eagan, Minnesota.
"People afraid to go to work, people afraid to take their kids to school, people being followed and all of that," Little recalled to NPR.
When a colleague posted on an internal employee chat claiming Thomson Reuters was a top corporate collaborator with ICE, Little said she felt "sick to my stomach."
Little joined a committee that sent a letter to company management in February demanding transparency. The group flagged that ICE could be using Thomson Reuters products unlawfully and requested greater oversight of the company's Department of Homeland Security contracts.
"Instead of addressing our concerns, our legitimate concerns — instead, they turn toward investigating me," Little told NPR. "And I was instrumental in leading the group. So I think that clearly they were trying to chill [the] activity of workers and that should scare every worker across the country."
Thomson Reuters' main surveillance tool is called CLEAR. According to NPR, the platform aggregates billions of data points on individuals from public and proprietary records, as well as social media. CLEAR also includes images from a network of license plate readers. ICE holds a nearly $5 million contract with Thomson Reuters beginning May 2025 for "license plate reader data to enhance investigations for potential arrest, seizure and forfeiture."
Little initially understood CLEAR was being used to target human traffickers and child exploitation cases — work she could support. But she grew concerned the tool was being deployed far more broadly by ICE "to identify immigrants and protesters without criminal histories."
An archived Thomson Reuters description stated explicitly that CLEAR is "not designed for use for mass illegal immigration inquiries or for deporting non-criminal undocumented persons and non-citizens." This raised question for Little about ICE's use of the platform and if it violates the company's own stated parameters.
Five days after the employee concerns became public, Little was called to an HR meeting where she was told she was being investigated for violating confidentiality and data-sharing policies. Within days, she was fired.
According to her lawsuit, Little was told she violated the company's code of conduct but received no written findings from any investigation or explanation of which specific provision she allegedly violated. Her lawsuit notes Little had never previously received a negative review or faced any disciplinary action during her tenure at the company.
With that in mind, she and her attorney are relying on Oregon's whistleblower protections in her lawsuit. According to her attorney, Maria Witt, "My client reported conduct that she reasonably believed was unlawful and she was fired for it, and that is expressly prohibited here in Oregon."
The lawsuit seeks to reverse her termination and award lost wages and compensatory damages, NPR is reporting.