For those that see halting illegal border crossings as a positive (which are likely a minority on HN but HN is not representative of the nation), this change hampers the ability to enforce the law.

Even for those that do think halting border crossings is bad, the consequences of making ICE change to a different IT solution is likely that ICE's bureaucracy is hampered and people detained at the border take longer to process and thus result in more hardship.

I'm honestly not sure. Other people will take up the up the contract, and the work will get done, but probably not quite as cheaply.

If evil is more expensive, it will be harder for evil doers to get as much of it done.

So yeah, I say "I'm not sure" because I don't know the personal motives of the individual outspoken people. It really depends on what they thought it was going to accomplish, and why they wanted those things to happen.

Thwarting ICE? Incredibly unlikely and impractical . Slowing ICE down? Probably.

The individual outspoken developer who started it seemed reasonably clear: he didn't want helping ICE through his code to be on his conscience.

I completely agree.

It is impossible to control the actions of other people. What they will or will not do should play little role in your own moral determinations. At the end of the day, anything done in business is only done for money. If you do something which you believe to be immoral, being able to say "but I got paid" will not help. If others step in and do it instead, they bear the moral consequence rather than you.

Whether one would consider the action requested to be rational really depends on the objective of the "mob".

If the objective is to gain some immediate press exposure for immigrants rights issues, it seems totally rational, and it appears to have achieved the goal.

If the objective is to improve conditions for immigrants in ICE/CBP custody in the near term, it's not clear it will help, and it could definitely have unintended negative consequences. For example, ERO agents under increased pressure due to IT systems going down may be less likely to offer DA on humanitarian grounds, if it's just easier and less paperwork to deport en masse. Maybe there's a strong rational argument to be made in favor, but average citizens don't have complete information or authority to investigate, so it really seems to boil down to more of a "gut instinct" decision.

If the objective is improvement in conditions for immigrants in the longer term, it might be rational if it's part of a persistent, steady application of pressure to reform ICE/CBP/ORR through a combination of protests, opening cases to trigger judicial oversight, and lobbying to achieve change through legislative processes. But it's unclear if this kind of boycott is particularly effective use of time/resources towards that goal.