Hilton removes Minneapolis hotel after franchise refuses to host US immigration agents

Hotel chain takes action after US Homeland Security says officers were denied rooms, calling it ‘unacceptable’

By Asiye Latife Yilmaz

ISTANBUL (AA) - Hilton Worldwide Holdings has removed a Minneapolis hotel from its system after the property refused to accept room bookings from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

The Hampton Inn Lakeville, an independent franchise operating under the Hilton brand, outside Minneapolis, refused to provide accommodation to ICE agents, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Monday in a post on the US social media company X.

DHS said that the hotel chain “maliciously cancelled” reservations made by officers using official government emails and rates, calling the move “unacceptable.”

Despite apologies from Hilton and the hotel’s independent operator over the initial incident, a video shared Tuesday on X suggested that ICE agents were still being denied rooms at the hotel.

“The independent hotel owner had assured us that they had fixed this problem and published a message confirming this,” Hilton said in a statement Tuesday.

“A recent video clearly raises concerns that they are not meeting our standards and values. As such, we are taking immediate action to remove this hotel from our systems,” it added.

The Trump administration has recently boosted the deployment of officers in Minneapolis amid allegations of fraud linked to Somali immigrants.

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