Silicon Valley giants round on Trump over travel ban

Ninety-seven firms file court document opposing Trump's controversial US immigration ban

A host of technology vendors have joined forces to a fight Donald Trump's US immigration ban in court.

97 tech firms - including Apple, Google and Microsoft - along with businesses from other sectors (full list below) - have filed a joint amicus briefing in Washington.

An amicus curiae briefing, or ‘friend-of-the-court' briefing, allows parties not involved in a case to assist the court by offering relevant information.

The filing states: "The [Trump immigration] Order represents a significant departure from the principles of fairness and predictability that have governed the immigration system of the United States for more than fifty years—and the Order inflicts significant harm on American business, innovation, and growth as a result.

"The Order makes it more difficult and expensive for US companies to recruit, hire, and retain some of the world's best employees. It disrupts ongoing business operations. And it threatens companies' ability to attract talent, business, and investment to the United States."

Trump signed an executive order at the end of last month banning people from seven mainly Muslim countries travelling to the US, which has been overturned by a US court.

The travel ban has reignited a volatile relationship between Trump and Silicon Valley that seemed to show signs of improving after his shock victory last year.

A host of tech leaders met Trump in December last year where the then president-elect told them he "wanted to help you folks do well", after 100 tech firms had released an open letter pledging their support to Hilary Clinton.

HPE's Meg Whitman also branded him a "dishonest demagogue".

There are a few noticeable absentees from the amicus court filing.

Amazon is not one of the 97 firms noted in the court briefing, but CEO Jeff Bezos slammed the travel ban last week and said in an email to staff that the Amazon legal team would fight Trump's actions.

Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins is also missing, as is Oracle co-CEO Safra Catz who is a member of Trump's transition team. Both attended the meeting with Trump in December.

There is also no mention of HP Inc, Hewlett Package Enterprise or IBM.

A full list of the 97 companies listed in the Amicus filing:

AdRoll

Aeris Communications

Airbnb

AltSchool

Ancestry.com

Appboy

Apple

AppNexus

Asana

Atlassian

Autodesk

Automattic

Box

Brightcove

Brit Media

CareZone

Castlight Health

Checkr

Chobani Global Holdings

Citrix Systems

Cloudera

Cloudflare

Copia Institute

DocuSign

DoorDash

Dropbox

Dynatrace

eBay

Etsy

Facebook

Fastly

Flipboard

Foursquare

Fuze

General Assembly Space

GitHub

Glassdoor

Google

GoPro

Harmonic

Hipmunk

Indiegogo

Intel

JAND

Kargo

Kickstarter

KIND

Knotel

Levi Strauss

LinkedIN

Lithium Technologies

Lyft

Mapbox

Maplebear

Marin Software

Medallia

A Medium Corporation

Meetup

Microsoft

Motivate International

Mozilla

Netflix

Netgear

NewsCred

Patreon

PayPal

Pinterest

Quora

Reddit

Rocket Fuel

SaaStr

Salesforce

Scopely

Shutterbox

Snap

Spokeo

Spotify

Square

Squarespace

Strava

Stripe

SurveyMonkey

TaskRabbit

Tech:NYC

Thumbtack

Turn

Twilio

Twitter

Turn

Uber

Via Transportation

Wikimedia Foundation

Workday

Y Combinator Management

Yelp

Zynga