The swift response of Hilton Hotels to one of its locations booting ICE agents shows just how dramatically the political and cultural environment has changed in just a few years.
That change is very much for the better.
On Monday, reports came out that a Minneapolis hotel associated with Hilton Hotels & Resorts had refused to allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to stay at its location. The Trump administration had announced a major surge of Department of Homeland Security agents to Minneapolis in response to the massive Somali fraud scandal.
According to the agency, the Minneapolis Hilton location not only refused to book ICE agents, but it also told them very explicitly in emails that it was doing so because of their “immigration work.”
That was unwise. DHS posted the emails on X.
“@HiltonHotels has launched a coordinated campaign in Minneapolis to REFUSE service to DHS law enforcement,” the official DHS X account posted Monday. “When officers attempted to book rooms using official government emails and rates, Hilton Hotels maliciously CANCELLED their reservations. This is UNACCEPTABLE. Why is Hilton Hotels siding with murderers and rapists to deliberately undermine and impede DHS law enforcement from their mission to enforce our nation’s immigration laws.”
Now if this was four or five years ago, I seriously doubt anything would have happened
Times have changed.
Not only has the management of the most important political social media app changed, not only is Trump back in office, but our culture has also dramatically shifted too.
Hilton Hotels immediately put out a statement saying that it is entirely against the actions of the Minneapolis location, run by franchisee EverPeak Hospitality.
“Hilton hotels serve as welcoming places for all. This hotel is independently owned and operated, and the actions referenced are not reflective of Hilton values,” the company wrote in a statement.
It’s actually jarring to see “not reflective of [insert company name here] values” used in the context of supporting something that conservatives want.
Hilton Hotels announced that it would investigate the incident.
It didn’t take long for things to get worse for the Minneapolis Hilton. Journalist Nick Sortor showed up at the location and found that the anti-DHS policies were still in effect.
Amazingly, Hilton sprang right into action. They put out another statement saying that they would sever the rogue hotel from their system.
It seems they are quite serious about this move too.
Did Hilton Hotels avoid their Bud Light blowup? Maybe, if they continue to follow through. As Jonathan Keeperman, co-host of BlazeTV’s “Rufo & Lomez” podcast, wrote on X, this kind of immediate and voluntary corporate compliance is a good thing.
Corporations in the Age of Obama had become particularly sensitive to the dictates of the cultural Left. Out of a combination of collaboration and fear, the Left reinforced its cultural values through corporate force without even needing the government or anything else to intervene.
Of course, in 2020 the Great Awokening went into overdrive, as the Left took every opportunity to cancel and exert its power to ensure that no institution and no space anywhere would allow anyone to speak or operate freely if they challenged the narratives they wished to foist on our society. Conservatives and even a fair number of liberals were completely, institutionally boxed out, silenced and ignored.
But as many empires become hubristic when they reach their zenith, so too did the Left’s institutional empire. Most Americans became fed up; they turned on the Bud Lights and other companies that were trying to shove noxious ideas (and crummy beer) down their throats.
It turns out you can’t just box out half the population and insult them and think there won’t be consequences.
And that’s what happened in the case of Hilton. This wasn’t just about DHS or ICE.
Hilton Hotels changed their policies because they feared their customers.
As Ed Morrissey at HotAir wrote, a large majority of Americans consider immigration enforcement to be an important issue.
“In the latest Harvard-Harris CAPS poll, [immigration enforcement] ranks third behind economic issues and health care among about twenty different issue sets polled,” Morrissey wrote. “In the same poll, 80% of respondents want illegal aliens who commit other crimes deported, 70% want the border closed, and 54% want all illegal immigrants deported regardless of other criminal activity.”
So, you can see why Hilton was quick to defuse this situation and signal to their customers that they don’t want to be associated with attempts to hinder DHS in carrying out the laws of this country.
This is a huge win. It shows that institutions no longer have the ruthless gatekeeping power on behalf of the Left that they once did. If they want to anger their customers, then they will pay a price for it. I suspect most won’t.
What we are seeing isn’t just a vibe shift, it’s a return to normalcy.
