Motel 6 will pay millions after submitting guest lists to immigration authorities: NPR

The Motel 6 chain has agreed to pay $ 12 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the state of Washington after several sites have provided information on thousands of clients to Immigration and Customs Enforcement without warrant.

Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson said Thursday that Motel 6 had released information to about 80,000 customers in that state between 2015 and 2017.

This has led to targeted surveys of guests with Latin-sounding names, according to Ferguson. He added that many guests had been interrogated by ICE, detained or deported as a result of these revelations.

This is the second regulation on the practice of the company in recent months.

Motel 6 also signed a legally-binding commitment to no longer share customer information without a warrant at any of its locations across the country, a practice the chain claims has already ended.

"The actions of Motel 6 have torn families apart and violated the privacy rights of tens of thousands of Washingtonians," Ferguson said in a statement. "Our resolution holds the Motel 6 responsible for the illegal disclosure of customers' confidential information without a warrant."

The company told The Associated Press Thursday that it "will enforce its privacy policy, which prohibits the sharing of information, except in cases where a warrant or binding subpoena is present or when local law requires disclosure of information, "reports AP.

The Phoenix New Times discovered this practice for the first time in September 2017 when journalist Antonia Farzan investigated two sites at Motel 6 in Phoenix.

"We were informed that this was happening, we started talking to local immigration lawyers and we certainly kept telling people that it was a trend," Farzan said. Ari Shapiro, of NPR, at the time. "They did not really know what was behind but they kept seeing people being caught at Motel 6."

Following the first media reports, Motel 6 published a statement saying that the practice had been abandoned and that she would give a directive to each of its sites to specify "that they are prohibited from voluntarily providing daily guest lists to ICE". The hotel said at the time that the practice had been set up "locally, unbeknownst to senior management".

A few months later, the state of Washington sued the company, alleging that employees at seven sites in the Puget Sound area had violated the state's consumer protection law when it came to court. they also published information about their customers.

Ferguson then said that hotels would hand over entire lists of guests to the authorities.

"According to our interviews with Motel 6 employees," he told NPR's Simon Simon, "ICE agents would circle names that sounded latino and analyzed them in a database, then held people on the basis of these random checks. "

Ferguson's statement on Thursday's settlement reported several cases of guests whose names had been given to ICE, including a man from Seattle who had spent a night at a Motel 6 near SeaTac packing Christmas presents. for his children.

"ICE agents approached him in the hotel parking lot, arrested him and deported him a few days later," the statement said. "The man was the sole provider of the household and his wife is currently struggling to support her child and four other children."

Motel 6 has also agreed to train its employees to not disclose customer information inappropriately and to maintain a 24-hour hotline to assist employees when they receive requests from customers. 39; information. The company will also be required to create a tool on its website to allow customers to report potential violations.

The state has announced that more than $ 10 million of the settlement fund would be paid to affected customers, including those who had no contact with ICE after disclosure of their information.

In November, Motel 6 settled a separate lawsuit filed in Arizona by the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund. The lawsuit identified eight detained Latin American plaintiffs, including one deported.