- Motel 6 has agreed to pay $10 million to settle a class-action lawsuit over claims the budget chain routinely provided guest lists from properties in Arizona to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, court documents showed on Saturday.
A previous settlement over the Arizona properties reached by the two sides was rejected in November 2018 by a federal judge who said it did not go far enough in making sure that the plaintiffs, many of whom may be in the country illegally, would be found and compensated. Immigration has become an incendiary issue in U.S. politics amid a surge of immigrants seeking to enter illegally and moves by President Donald Trump to step up deportations and build a wall along the southern border with Mexico.
The lawsuit was filed in January 2018 by the Los Angeles-based Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or MALDEF, on behalf of Motel 6 guests with Latino names after the Phoenix New Times newspaper reported that the chain was providing their names to ICE at two of its properties in Arizona and six in Washington state.
The cost of illegal immigration never ends.