Suit: Motel 6 Provided Guest Information To ICE

SEATTLE — Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced a lawsuit against national hotel chain Motel 6 alleging the chain voluntarily provided guest lists to U.S immigration officials on a routine basis for at least two years.

Ferguson says Motel 6 admits that at least six of its Washington state locations shared personal information of its guests with ICE over the past two years at their locations in Bellingham, North Everett, South Everett, South Seattle, SeaTac and South Tacoma. This lead to significant consequences including the detention of at least six individuals over a roughly 6 month period in 2017 who stayed at motels in Everett, Ferguson said.

Specifically, four of those locations released the personal information of at least 9,151 guests to ICE, even though its privacy policy assured consumers it would protect this information, Ferguson said. The personal information released included customers’ driver’s license numbers, room number, name, guest identification number, date of birth and license plate number, Ferguson said.

Ferguson adds that Motel 6 knew that ICE used its guest lists to target customers based on national origin, including customers with Latino-sounding names.

Ferguson said the releases of personal information came to light as the result of an investigative media report by a Phoenix newspaper in September, which revealed two Motel 6 locations were voluntarily providing guest lists to ICE. At the time, Motel 6 officials claimed it was a local issue to those two motels, Ferguon said.

However, Ferguson conducted a local investigation of Motel 6 locations and found a similar pattern.

“Motel 6 implied this was a local problem,” Ferguson said. “We have found that is not true.” His office interviewed several people who have worked at the aforementioned Motel 6 locations in Washington and the company later admitted that at least six Washington Motel 6 locations provided guest registry information to ICE agents since at least 2015.

Ferguson said Motel 6 locations provided a form for ICE visits, referred to as a “law enforcement acknowledgement form,” which agents signed upon receiving the day’s guest list, adding at least three of these locations changed the form in the same way at about the same time in May 2017.

The suit alleges Motel 6 trained new employees on the process to give the guest registry and all the names of their guests to ICE, and the training and practice did not require the agents to produce a warrant.

Ferguson says for example, at the South Everett location, ICE agents visited the motels early in the morning or late at night, requested the day’s guest list, circled any Latino-sounding names and returned to vehicles, “presumably to run those names through a database.”

On at least one occasion, ICE later returned to the motel and detained at least one person, Ferguson said. Investigators discovered that from Feb. 1 to Sept. 14, 2017, the South Everett location gave guests’ private, personal information to ICE on approximately 228 occasions in a 225-day period, Ferguson said.

The suit also alleges Motel 6 knew that ICE used the guest lists to target guests based on their national origin and that the Washington Law Against Discrimination specifically prohibits direct and indirect discrimination on the basis of national origin.

A spokesperson for Motel 6 tells KOMO News: “In September, Motel 6 issued a directive to every one of our more than 1,400 locations, making it clear that they are prohibited from voluntarily providing daily guests lists to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Motel 6 takes this matter very seriously, and we have and will continue to fully cooperate with the Office of the State Attorney General.”

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in King County Superior Court, asserts that Motel 6 committed thousands of violations of the Consumer Protection Act and hundreds of violations of the Washington Law Against Discrimination.