A Los Angeles City Council member has introduced a proposal that would block hotels in the area from being used by the out-of-control Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency to unlawfully detain unaccompanied children who are seeking safety in the U.S., following a report from The New York Times finding this depraved practice has stretched into far more areas than previously known.
While initial reports said ICE was using hotels in Arizona and Texas to hold kids before quickly expelling them supposedly out of so-called novel coronavirus pandemic health concerns, this latest report says the agency has also used hotels in cities including Los Angeles. “We don’t want anybody to ever think this is OK in the city of Los Angeles,” council member Gil Cedillo tells the Los Angeles Times. “This is a sanctuary city and that has to mean something ... We are not participating in the horrific, draconian policies of Donald Trump.”
The Associated Press initially reported that ICE has used notorious private contractor MVM Inc. to detain kids as young as age 1 at several of Hampton Inn & Suites’ locations in Arizona and Texas, including one McAllen location where an attorney with a leading advocacy agency in the state was physically blocked and shoved on camera when he was trying to verify the well-being of some of these kids.
”The existence of the hotel detentions came to light last month, but documents reviewed by The New York Times reveal the extent to which major chains are participating,” the new report said. “The federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has detained at least 860 migrants at a Quality Suites in San Diego; Hampton Inns in Phoenix and in McAllen and El Paso, Texas; a Comfort Suites Hotel in Miami; a Best Western in Los Angeles; and an Econo Lodge in Seattle.”
It’s the Best Western location that’s now spurring Cedillo into action, introducing a proposal “to bar or suspend the certificate of occupancy—a document that confirms a structure is in compliance with building codes—for any hotel that is used for detaining migrant youth or families,” according to the L.A. Times.
The newspaper reported that while the Best Western company said the independently-owned location in the area wasn’t collaborating with ICE, its answer into whether it previously had was a bit more murky. “When asked whether migrants had been detained there previously, Best Western said it was ‘not aware of any evidence to support the allegation that individuals were detained at the hotel in 2020,’” the report said. Not exactly an assuring “nope.”
Hampton Inn & Suites owner Hilton had also offered the “well, it’s independently-owned” line regarding the McAllen location being used as a baby jail, but then had to release a statement publicly rebuking the detentions following massive public outrage. “It seems incumbent upon the hotel—or any business—to be concerned about who they’re working with,” Cedillo said in the L..A Times. It would be, because what’s happening to these children is a crime.
Officials have made the inhumane claim that keeping these kids out of the U.S. is a matter of public health safety during the pandemic, but ProPublica exposed this as a lie: The Trump administration has been expelling them even after they test negative for COVID-19. And because of the abrupt manner in which they’re quickly kicked out in violation of anti-trafficking law, advocates have been unable to locate many of them since.
“ICE’s comprehensive testing appears to undermine the rationale for the mass expulsion policy: that it is necessary to ‘prevent the introduction’ of COVID-19 into the United States,” that report said.
