“NO ROOM AT THE INN!” The U.S. Department of Homeland Security posted on its official X account on Monday. “HiltonHotels has launched a coordinated campaign in Minneapolis to REFUSE service to DHS law enforcement. When officers attempted to book rooms using official government emails and rates, Hilton Hotels maliciously CANCELLED their reservations.”
Leaving aside for a second the obscene comparison of gestapo-style immigration troops to Mary and Joseph searching for lodging in the Nativity story, the post made an extraordinary and unlikely claim: One of the largest hotel chains in the world was taking an organized stand against the Trump administration’s deportation machine. It was, like so many administration claims, a lie.
Behind DHS’s self-pitying post appears to be a story of resistance by workers at a specific Hilton.
There has been no such coordinated campaign by the multibillion-dollar company. Behind DHS’s self-pitying post, however, appears to be a story of resistance by workers and local operators at a specific Hilton franchise — the sort of pushback that should be supported and repeated wherever Donald Trump’s shock troops roam.
DHS posted a screenshot of an email allegedly from the Hampton Inn Lakeville front office manager that said, “[W]e are not allowing any ICE or immigration agents to stay at our property. If you are with DHS or immigration, let us know as we will have to cancel your reservation.” The individual sender’s name is redacted. The Lakeville property is independently owned and operated by Everpeak Hospitality, though Hilton owns the Hampton Inn brand.
Within hours, however, both Hilton and Everpeak released statements condemning the reported cancellations and affirming their willingness to serve the immigration agents terrorizing communities nationwide.
“We have been in direct contact with the hotel, and they have apologized for the actions of their team, which was not in keeping with their policies,” said a statement from Hilton.
Everpeak said in a statement on its website that the incident “was inconsistent with our policy of being a welcoming place for all.” The company said they are “in touch with the impacted guests to ensure they are accommodated.”
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, however, rejected the company’s claim that the matter had been addressed, posting on X on Monday night that DHS and ICE “haven’t heard anything from them.”
Hilton then announced on Tuesday that it would be cutting ties with the hotel after far-right influencer Nick Sortor posted a video online, which appears to show a worker at the front desk confirming that the hotel is maintaining the policy to deny rooms to immigration agents.
In the end, both Hilton and Everpeak publicly aligned with the administration’s logic that has for months framed the heavily armed, masked ICE officers as victims.
“We do not discriminate against any individuals or agencies and apologize to those impacted,” Everpeak’s statement said.
Following unsubstantiated claims by far-right provocateurs that members of Minnesota’s Somali community are committing welfare fraud, Trump has sent over 2,000 immigration agents to Minneapolis in the latest leg of his racist crackdowns. It’s a vile, base-baiting attack — not least because most of the Somali community are citizens and legal residents — which businesses should indeed refuse to aid.
It’s not surprising that there’s little coordinated resistance at a major hotel chain. Big businesses will bend over backwards to avoid going head-to-head with the petty and vengeful Trump regime. After DHS’s social media outburst, Hilton’s shares were down 2.5 percent at the close of trading on Monday. For the most part, hospitality giants have gone out of their way to accommodate ICE agents, even permitting the use of hotel rooms as temporary holding cells to detain immigrant families prior to deportation.
These collaborations and acquiescence are all the more reason to throw support behind those who do take a stand — from smaller, more conscientious institutions to the workers themselves.
Powerful corporations won’t stand in solidarity with us, but we can multiply acts of local resistance until they become an accumulative force.
Inconvenience ICE
Even creating short-lived inconvenience for ICE troops is better than advanced compliance. Every barrier to Trump’s immigration forces moving smoothly through a city is a good thing.
Protesters blocking streets, networks warning immigrant neighbors of ICE agents lurking, judges refusing to let ICE in courts, lawsuits on lawsuits, or workers refusing service to officers — these are all acts that can and must be built upon and normalized.
When the Trump administration violently escalated its anti-immigrant attacks on Los Angeles last summer, protesters launched a “No Sleep for ICE” campaign, staging loud and disruptive rallies outside hotels where federal agents were staying. The protests successfully drove agents from a number of hotels, and led the U.S. Marines to compile a list of “LA Hotels to Avoid” when Trump sent National Guard troops and Marines to the city.
We might recall, too, another short-lived and extraordinary event at a Minneapolis hotel, this time during Trump’s first term. Following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020, as powerful uprisings spread across the country, an 136-room Minneapolis Sheraton hotel was taken over by activists, including hotel workers with the initial consent of the property’s owner, and turned into a temporary home for unhoused people and others who needed shelter in the midst of the protests. Some dubbed it the “Share-a-ton.” Volunteers provided food, medicine, and other necessities. Handwritten signs with the word “sanctuary” were posted on the windows.
The “Share-a-ton” did not last long; the 200 occupants were ordered to leave after two weeks, when the property’s management company complained to the owner of multiple violations, including drug use. The philosopher Eva von Redecker described the brief experiment as a sort of “short-lived anomaly” that nonetheless “forms a crack through which a possible different future illuminates the present.”
I like to think of ICE’s canceled hotel rooms as a continuation of this legacy on behalf of Minneapolis hotel workers — a refusal to continue business as usual in the face of state violence. And, as von Redecker said of the Share-a-ton, we need more of these cracks to make a brighter future possible.
