Six Arrested In Midtown Protesting Amazon's Links To ICE

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — Six people were arrested Tuesday night during a protest in front of the Amazon bookstore on West 34th street between Fifth and Sixth avenues, police said.

The protesters were arrested after blocking the store's entrance and are facing charges of disorderly conduct for blocking pedestrian traffic, an NYPD spokesman said. The people were taking part in a protest organized by Movimiento Cosecha to shame Amazon for doing business with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the group said on social media.

"We put the spotlight on "progressive" tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Salesforce who say they stand with immigrants but have multimillion dollar contracts with ICE," Movimiento Cosecha wrote on Facebook. "If you won't stop doing business with ICE, we won't let you do business at all!"

The group organized a protest in front of Amazon's Columbus Circle bookstore in July, Mic first reported. That protest did not result in any arrests, according to the report.

In May, the American Civil Liberties Union reported that Amazon struck a deal with the federal government to deploy the company's facial recognition system called "Rekognition." The technology uses artificial intelligence to identify people, objects and text in images, according to Amazon's description.

"Amazon Rekognition also provides highly accurate facial analysis and facial recognition on images and video that you provide," Amazon says about the technology. "You can detect, analyze, and compare faces for a wide variety of user verification, people counting, and public safety use cases."

Lead photo by Brendan Krisel/Patch