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At least two Motel 6 locations in Phoenix, Arizona reported guest lists to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). It was also rumored that ICE paid out $200 for every undocumented immigrant caught. A PR director from Motel 6's parent company confirmed that staff members at the locations were working with ICE without the approval of senior management:
At least two Motel 6 locations in Arizona are reporting their guest lists to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, which has resulted in at least 20 arrests, according to local media.
Phoenix New Times reported on Wednesday that two franchise locations of the motel chain are sending their guest lists to ICE agents "every morning," and possibly receiving $200 per undocumented immigrant caught in the sting.
"We send a report every morning to ICE — all the names of everybody that comes in," one front-desk clerk told the Times. "Every morning at about 5 o'clock, we do the audit and we push a button and it sends it to ICE."
Immigration attorney Denise Aguilar wrote The New Times in an email that some of her clients "have heard (no telling how valid the info is) that ICE is paying $200 per person for the front-desk clerk to report."
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that law enforcement must obtain a warrant to search hotel/motel registries.
Also at The Washington Post, NY Mag, and Vice.
[Ed. Addition] A follow-on story at Phoenix New Times After New Times Story, Motel 6 Says It Will Stop Sharing Guest Lists With ICE raises many interesting questions about the situation, and then was itself updated:
Update, 3:25 p.m.: Motel 6 has issued another statement in response to our story on their practice of sharing guest lists with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement:
"Over the past several days, it was brought to our attention that certain local Motel 6 properties in the Phoenix-area were voluntarily providing daily guest lists to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). As previously stated, this was undertaken at the local level without the knowledge of senior management. When we became aware of it, it was discontinued.
Moving forward, to help ensure that this does not occur again, we will be issuing a directive to every one of our more than 1,400 locations nationwide, making clear that they are prohibited from voluntarily providing daily guest lists to ICE.
Additionally, to help ensure that our broader engagement with law enforcement is done in a manner that is respectful of our guests' rights, we will be undertaking a comprehensive review of our current practices and then issue updated, company-wide guidelines.
Protecting the privacy and security of our guests are core values of our company. Motel 6 apologizes for this incident and will continue to work to earn the trust and patronage of our millions of loyal guests."
Related: (Rhode Island) ACLU Statement On "Change" In Motel 6 Policy of Sharing Guest List (2015)
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Saturday September 16 2017, @07:58PM (1 child)
Of course, if a government does take money away from people to hand out freebies, that doesn't give them the right to start keeping people from entering other people's property, either. Two wrongs don't make a right.
People are certainly entitled to defend themselves, repelling force with force. They aren't entitled to use force against new neighbors that they just don't like or don't want to have to compete with.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @11:24PM
Thank you for breaking it down, jdavidb. (For the record, we seem to be largely on the same page regarding the source and limits of just governmental authority, the moral invalidity of the initiation of force, taxation at gunpoint being theft, etc.)
I'll attack what I see as your weakest front first: without restrictions on who or what can set foot on the land delineated as the United States of America (bear with me, even if you consider nation-states to be invalid), what's to stop some other nation from shipping tanks, troops, and other equipment over and building military bases throughout the entire USA with the vocal and stated aim that as soon as they feel confident in a sweeping victory, they will attack and conquer the lands and people of the USA by force of arms (or threatening that if they fail, to light off all the nukes/biological/chemical weapons they've built in said bases in a modern-day salting of the earth)?
Does your view change if the invading nation keeps silent about its intentions? If just troops and light arms are sent? Just troops? How about diseased civilians whose habits may be linked to an epidemic? [soylentnews.org]
Assuming you have a direct answer to all of that, how would your ethics handle a people-group buying up all of, say, Montana, and turning it into a giant gated community with their own list of arbitrary, and for sake of argument, politically-incorrect criteria (e.g. only Christians, only lighter-than-a-paper-bag whites, no homosexuals)? What about a similar private society buying a strip of six inches, six feet, or six miles of land that stretches all around the USA's current border?