The national Motel 6 hotel chain will pay $7.6 million in settlement costs following a lawsuit over the company secretly leaking personal information about guests to a federal immigration agency that oversees deportations of those illegally in the country.
G6 Hospitality, the motel’s parent company, proposed in federal court to fork up the millions of dollars to the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, according to a report published late Wednesday.
The chain was sued in January over several of its locations leaking the names of its guests to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2017. Its senior management previously said it was not aware individual motels were doing this.
ICE was not sued because it did not solicit or divulge that information.
In one example, a woman who checked into Motel 6 with her husband on June 28, 2017, said her husband showed the front desk clerk his Mexican passport. The following morning, three ICE agents arrived at their room, questioned them, then took them to the Phoenix field office.
The man was held by ICE for 30 days and the wife was deported. It’s not clear if ICE ran the leaked information against federal databases to then determine if those on the list were wanted for crimes in addition to being illegally in the country.
MALDEF’s lawsuit said the wife, husband, and at least six other people were affected by the backdoor operation. In addition, the plaintiffs argued the company discriminated against guests based on their national origin, which violates federal law.
“Motel 6 fully recognizes the seriousness of the situation and accepts full responsibility for both compensating those who were harmed and taking the necessary steps to ensure that we protect the privacy of our guests,” Motel 6 and MALDEF said in a joint statement this week.
If the Arizona judge approves the settlement, $5.6 million will go to those who were detained or deported. Guests questioned by ICE but not taken into custody will split $1 million. The remaining $1 million will go into a settlement pool for people whose information was shared with authorities between Feb. 1, 2017, and Nov. 2, 2018.
ICE did not respond to a request for comment on the case.
