Ice used Marriott chain to detain immigrants, despite hotel’s 2019 pledge not to cooperate | US immigration

A hotel in Sheraton in Louisiana was used by immigration officials to hold people who are expelled, in what seems to be a contradiction of a position, the mother company of Sheraton, Marriott, took in 2019 when it declared that its properties would not be used in cooperation with ice.

The interception reported for the first time that the hotel, located on MacArthur Drive in Alexandria, Louisiana, near a large deportation and airport center used by ICE, had been used by immigration officials earlier this month to hold a father and his teenage son for four days after their arrest in New York. They were then expelled to the equator. The interception cited evidence of the phone follow -up which had been shared with the publication and were seen later by the Guardian.

The evidence corroborates the account of a source knowing hotel operations in Alexandria, who told the Guardian that they thought that the place had been used to hold families of immigrants and unaccompanied children since its renovation at the end of 2023. The source observed ice entrepreneurs as recently in June of this year.

The source added that other hotels in the region have also been used to hold families of immigrants.

It is not clear if Marriott has an official contract with ICE or what the company knows about the use by ICE from Sheraton to Alexandria. In a case that emerged last year, Marriott continued a New York -based franchise after the hotel concluded a partnership with the city so that it was used as an immigrant refuge, saying that it had done it without the consent of Marriott.

Marriott did not respond to several requests for comments.

“It would be very unhappy that large hotel channels facilitate the cruel policy of the Trump administration to deport families,” said Lee Genernt, deputy director of the ACLU immigrant rights project.

In 2019, during Donald Trump’s first term, Marriott rejected the idea that one of his hotels or properties – which includes Sheraton and Courtyard hotels – would be used by ice to hold immigrants. He made the statement at a time when the Trump administration called an overview of undocumented immigrants. Citing anonymous sources, ABC News reported at the time that administration officials had discussed internally from the possibility that they need hotel rooms due to the limited capacity in ICE detention centers.

“Our hotels are not configured to be detention facilities, but to also be open to guests and members of the community. Although we have no special idea to know if the US government plans to use it hotels to help the border situation, Marriott has made the decision to refuse any request for use of our hotels as a detention facilities,” said a spokesperson for the company in July 2019 News.

The position of the company won computer applause at the time, such as the public recognition of the American Historical Association, an association of professional historians, which announced in a public press release that it appreciated the “stand of principles” of Marriott and noted the importance of immigrants for the hotel and the related industries.

It is well documented that ice uses hotels to house families of immigrants who are expelled from the United States or who are transferred to other detention centers.

In a case that drew national attention in April, Ice owned two families in Louisiana with three of their children American citizens and held them beyond and under custody in a hotel for days, despite several attempts by family members and lawyers to contact them.

Families, as well as their children American citizens, were expelled in the early hours of April 25 and, according to legal deposits, had taken place in a place in Alexandria.

In this case, the deposits examined by the Guardian include a short submission handwritten by one of the mothers written on paper which closely corresponds to the images of notes of branded sheraton published online. The Guardian could not be independently confirmed if the families had been detained in the Sheraton of Alexandria.

The interception report focused on the story of Edison Iza and his 15 -year -old son, Roger, who was said to have been arrested by Ice during an immigration recording in New York on August 9. The couple would then have been transported by plane to Louisiana and “locked up” to the Sheraton hotel, where they stayed four days without access to their phone or the Internet.

“We couldn’t call or go to the web to ask for help,” Roger told The Intercept. “Without our phones, we knew no names or phone numbers.”

Ice did not immediately answer the Guardian questions on the use by the Sheraton agency, including if it has a contract with the hotel or uses it on an ad hoc basis.

The hotel industry is particularly vulnerable to ice raids and the expulsion program for the Trump administration, given the high percentage of undocumented industry workers.

Although the Ministry of Internal Security has published advice earlier this year that ICE agents should not make raids in hotels, restaurants and farms, the advice was then reversed, according to a June report in the Washington Post. According to the 2023 census

Additional Maanvi Singh report

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