Hotels on Thin ICE

Good morning! I’m back in rainy Brooklyn after spending time in Minneapolis to report on ICE’s immigration crackdown and the impact on hotels. Here’s my story. And warning, dear reader, there’s a lot in there about franchise agreements – which, many of you might not know, I used to read for a living when I was an attorney. 

Hilton’s franchise agreement for Hampton Inn was the seed that sent me to Minneapolis in the first place. I know these documents, and I know they were not meant to handle what happened there. That was the story I couldn't stop pulling on.

These kinds of franchise agreements govern 72% of American chain hotels. They were not written for a world in which federal agents book blocks of rooms, unions advise operators to demand warrants, and organized protest movements run nightly intelligence operations to identify which hotels are housing ICE.

And yet here we are.

What I found reporting this story is that everyone in the industry understands exactly what's happening and almost no one will say it on the record. Especially the big hotel brands. 

The franchisees, many of them immigrant families who built their businesses across generations, are absorbing costs no one budgeted for: private security at $150 an hour, the sudden exclusion from government lodging programs. Their brand affiliation — crucial for daily reservations — is at stake. 

And then there are the workers who cook, clean, and take care of the guests — one in three are immigrants. In Minneapolis, the hospitality union told me that hundreds didn't show up for work after the raids started out of fear. Some workers were detained despite legal status, airport badges, and pending green cards. A federal judge ordered one released, ruling his detention violated the Fifth Amendment. He'd shown up for his shift at a hotel that was also housing the agents who arrested him.

The industry executive who told me this is "a no-win situation" was not wrong. But I think it's more specific than that. It's a no-framework situation. 

The brands control the agreements. The franchisees absorb the risk. The workers take on the rest. And when the whole system comes under pressure, the structure transfers the damage exactly the way it was designed to — downward. One protester called Minneapolis "ground zero for the playbook." And that’s with the World Cup coming to 11 American cities this summer.

While I’d like to think we are heading into the spring and summer of 2026 as a time of renewed peace, love and happiness – well, no. Minneapolis isn’t the end of this story. It’s chapter one.