Motel 6 Is Getting Sued For Trying To Be All MAGA

Hey Motel 6, looks like a Washington State courthouse will leave the light on for you.

When Motel 6 got caught narcing on its hotel guests to immigration officials, the chain tried to play it off as a misstep with a local franchise. Check out this update to our post about what happened in Arizona. The company’s statement makes it sounds like ratting out people to ICE was a “Phoenix area” problem.

Evidently, it was not. The Washington State Attorney General, Bob Ferguson, announced that he is suing the hotel chain for “for voluntarily providing guest lists to agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.” Ferguson says the practice goes back at least two years! From the ABA Journal:

The suit, filed in King County Superior Court, states that at least six Motel 6 locations statewide released client information, including names, driver’s license numbers, room numbers, dates of birth and license plate numbers, affecting at least 9,000 guests.

“The voluntary release of this information constitutes an unfair and deceptive business practice, and violates the [Washington] Consumer Protection Act” and the Washington Law Against Discrimination, according to the attorney general’s office.

Beyond the release of information, the suit alleges that Motel 6 knew that federal agents used the personal information “to identify and single out guests based on national origin, including guests with Latino-sounding names.”

I know, unfortunately, that very many people do not see the problem with a hotel chain acting to entrap undocumented people and get them deported. But hopefully even some of those people can see the problem with a hotel releasing the information of 9,000 people, the overwhelming majority of them American citizens, to federal agents simply because they had “Latino-sounding” names.

In addition to this flagrant violation of privacy, Motel 6 helped ICE detain six individuals “presumed to be in the country illegally.”

Motel 6’s parent company said that it ordered its chains to stop this practice back in September when the Arizona news broke. But, obviously now, we’re not looking at some isolated incidents by some franchise managers with bad intentions. If you have a Motel 6 in your state, I hope your Attorney General is looking into similar violations.

And here I thought Trump would be the only hotel chain I’d have to boycott for the rest of my life. La Quinta, you’ve now got my “I’m too tired to keep driving, but it’s too cold to just pull over and sleep in my car” business.

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Washington state attorney general sues Motel 6 for handing over customer data to immigration agents [ABA Journal]

Earlier: Knock, Knock — Room Service? No, ICE.
At Motel 6, We’ll Keep The Light On For You (And Then Maybe We’ll Call The Cops On You)


Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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