Free Republic

The Motel 6 in Portland has been shut down due to health violations five years after it began taking in homeless people and illegal immigrants. “There were what I can only assume were homeless people walking in to use the microwave and drink the free coffee. There were shady people loitering in the parking lot and lobby. There was what I believe to be a social worker filling out forms with and handing out food and supplies to homeless people in the lobby. When we arrived the bathroom floor was wet with human hair spread out over the floor,” said...

A Texas man who raps about robbing ATMs lived out his own lyrics when he was busted for stealing from a cash machine in Tennessee earlier this week. Ladesion Riley, 30, was one of four people charged for allegedly holding up an ATM technician at a Bank of America in Nashville as he serviced the machine on Monday, according to the Nashville Metropolitan Police Department. The other suspects are Darius Dugas, 27, Sashondre Dugas, 32, and Christopher Alton, 27. All four alleged thieves hail from Houston. According to police, two members of the group approached the technician from behind around...

Stan Richards, the founder of The Richards Group, made the remarks during a virtual meeting held on Oct. 8, in order to preview a Motel 6 commercial that was intended to celebrate Black artists, according to sources from the Richards Group who spoke with Ad Age. Richards had also stated that the ad would turn off Motel 6’s “significant white supremacist clients,” according to the source.

Military flights making stopovers in Scotland are not unusual, and there were no rooms closer to the airport, an Air Force spokesman said Saturday in an emailed statement to The Associated Press. “As our aircrews serve on these international airlift missions, they follow strict guidelines on contracting for hotel accommodations and all expenditures of taxpayer dollars,” Brig Gen Edward Thomas wrote. “In this case, they made reservations through the Defense Travel System and used the closest available and least expensive accommodations to the airfield within the crews’ allowable hotel rates.” [...] A local government contractor made the Scotland reservations, and...

Motel 6 will pay $12 million to settle a lawsuit by the Washington state attorney general over the lodging chain's practice of handing over guest lists to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. The company also committed to no longer provide guest information without a warrant, a policy that will be adopted nationally, prosecutors said. It's not the first time Motel 6 has faced legal claims for providing guest information to immigration authorities. In November, it agreed to pay up to $7.6 million to Hispanic guests to settle a lawsuit claiming it violated their privacy by sharing guest lists with...

After a nationwide class-action lawsuit against Motel 6, the chain agreed to pay as much as $7.6 million to guests who said their private information was given to U.S. immigration agents, according to court records. Former guests sued Motel 6 over privacy violations earlier this year, alleging that the chain handed over their personal information to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit came after a 2017 Phoenix New Times report that ICE agents made at least 20 arrests at two Motel 6 locations in Arizona.

Motel 6 will pay up to $7.6 million to Hispanic guests to settle a proposed class-action lawsuit claiming that it violated their privacy by regularly providing guest lists to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) filed the lawsuit after the Phoenix New Times said ICE agents had arrested 20 people over six months at Motel 6s in Arizona, using guest lists to target people by national origin. “Motel 6 fully recognizes the seriousness of the situation and accepts full responsibility for both compensating those who were harmed and taking the...

The state of Washington has filed a consumer protection and civil rights lawsuit against the Motel 6 chain for violating customers' privacy. In September, Phoenix New Times revealed that employees at two Phoenix-area Motel 6s had been regularly sharing guest information with ICE. After our story was picked up by national news outlets, Motel 6 pledged to discontinue the practice and claimed that it had been "undertaken at the local level without the knowledge of senior management." We now have evidence that the same thing was happening in Washington. "It was not isolated to two hotels in Phoenix, not by...

Motel 6 says its employees in Phoenix will no longer work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents following news reports that its workers were reporting on guests they believed were in the United States illegally. In a tweet about reports first published in the Phoenix New Times, Motel 6 said Wednesday: “This was implemented at the local level without the knowledge of senior management. When we became aware of it last week, it was discontinued.” Employees at the Motel 6 at one of the locations — near a stretch of other budget motels, discount stores and fast food chain...

On a hot Wednesday in June, Manuel Rodriguez-Juarez, a 33-year-old landscaper, got into an argument with his live-in girlfriend. While he waited for her to cool down, he decided to check into a $45-a-night room at a nearby Motel 6 on Maryvale’s southern fringe, where fast-food restaurants and gas stations catering to travelers passing through on Interstate 10 sit alongside neighborhood panaderias and marisquerias. The front-desk clerk told him that he needed to show identification in order to reserve a room. Rodriguez-Juarez handed over the only thing he had — a Mexican voter ID card. Six hours later, he was...

Thursday night, Albuquerque police identified the man killed in a shootout at a west side Motel 6 with former CNN reporter Chuck de Caro as 27-year-old Tomorio Walton, who APD says is an absconder out of Memphis, Tennessee. APD spokesperson Tanner Tixier said it is unknown how long Walton had been in the Albuquerque area.

Former CNN anchor and Manzano High School graduate Lynne Russell told Action 7 News she and her husband Chuck de Caro were robbed at gunpoint around 11:30 p.m. at the Motel 6 near Coors and Iliff. De Caro worked as a correspondent for CNN. Russell said they were exhausted Tuesday night and decided to go to a motel to rest. She had gone to the car to get something when a man put a gun to her head, dragged her back into the motel room and demanded her valuables. "The man pushed me inside, I was airborne, literally. And (I)...

A road trip down old Route 66 led to a Wild West-style motel shootout for a pioneering CNN anchor and her former-soldier hubby. Lynne Russell — the first woman to ever solo-anchor a primetime network news show — and Chuck de Caro, 65, had stopped at a Motel 6 for the night in Albuquerque when an intruder slipped into their room as Russell went to grab something from the car around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday. “I opened the door and he materialized out of nowhere; he was inside,” she told The Post. “And he pushed me into the room and onto...

A former CNN reporter shot and killed a man who allegedly tried to rob him and his wife at a northwest Albuquerque motel room Tuesday night. Chuck de Caro, who is married to former CNN Headline News anchor Lynne Russell, has worked as an investigative reporter for CNN and other news organizations. The couple was staying at the Motel 6 at 6015 Iliff NW while on their way to California. According to Russell’s account, de Caro was struck three times in the firefight before shooting and killing the offender, who hasn’t been identified by police. De Caro was taken to...

In an interview with Wolf Blitzer, Herman Cain said a new accuser would be coming forward to accuse him of having a 13-year affair with him. No links yet as the story is currently breaking and details are still being released. Apparentally a Georgia TV station has the exclusive.

NOVEMBER 23--Joseph Jones, 73, was sleeping in a Motel 6 room in Spartanburg, South Carolina late Sunday evening when he was awakened by a phone call. The male caller, who identified himself as a hotel administrator, spun out a bizarre story about a prior guest having left “highly sophisticated cameras” in the guest’s room. The man told Jones that “he would tell him what to do to get rid of them,” according to a Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office report. At the caller’s direction, Jones took the ceramic toilet tank cover and smashed the television (presumably a hiding place for a...

By PR Newswire Growing list of companies reject host's bigoted rhetoric WASHINGTON, April 25 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Hate Hurts America Community and Interfaith Coalition (HHA) today announced that Motel 6 (http://www.motel6.com/), part of the Accor North America chain of more than 950 hotels, has joined a growing list of companies that have stopped advertising or refuse to place their ads on Michael Savage's "Savage Nation" radio program. A company representative told HHA the chain will not air commercials on Savage's program "in any market." HHA, a group of religious and civic organizations seeking to challenge hate speech on talk radio,...

US delegation visits Svalbard US Senator Hillary Clinton arrived on Norway's Arctic archipelago of Svalbard Sunday night, part of a US Congressional delegation studying climate and environmental issues. She seized the opportunity to bash current policies under US President George W Bush. US Senators Hillary Clinton and John McCain are visiting Svalbard to see the ill effects of global warming first-hand. PHOTO: JAN- MORTEN BJØRNBAKK Clinton, with Republican US Senator John McCain standing by, claimed that the battle against global warming had lost ground under the Bush Administration. But "we're working now" to secure broad political agreement on climate issues,...

Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, Accor Lodging North America is a division of Paris-based Accor (www.accor.com), the world’s third-largest hospitality company and the European leader in travel, tourism and corporate services. Accor Lodging North America operates more than 1,200 upscale and economy properties owned by Accor including the upscale Sofitel and Novotel hotel locations in the U.S. and Canada, as well as economy leaders Red Roof Inns, Motel 6 and its new extended-stay product, Studio 6. Together, Red Roof Inns (www.redroof.com), Motel 6 (www.motel6.com), and Studio 6 (www.staystudio6.com), comprise nearly 10% of the entire U.S. budget lodging segment.

<p>The French-owned hotel chain quietly lowered the French flags flying in front of all 10 of its U.S. properties earlier this week to avoid being stung by anti-France sentiment stemming from the European country's vocal opposition to war with Iraq.</p> <p>Although the chain said it had not received any complaints, each hotel's French flag was replaced with a state or city flag.</p> <p>"As a mark of respect, we felt it might be nice to bring it down for some time," said Helen Lalitte, vice president of marketing for Sofitel North America.</p>