Former acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf told Newsmax on Tuesday that the refusal of service for Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents by a Minneapolis hotel is par for the course in America's Democrat-run, or "blue," cities.
Wolf told "American Agenda" that "unfortunately, this is what ICE has to deal with, particularly when they operate in blue cities."
DHS posted about the problem Monday, saying a Hilton Hotel in Minneapolis had canceled ICE reservations for agents assigned to protect the area.
After nearly a day of review, Hilton corporate removed that independently owned hotel from its reservations system.
Wolf said the underlying issue is people associating with liberal policies trying to undermine the Trump administration.
"We saw in Portland, ICE officers actually being accosted at their hotels," Wolf said. "Here in Minneapolis, they're being refused hotels. So, I think in these blue cities and blue states where there is anti-ICE sentiment, unfortunately, I think ICE and DHS, they're going to continue to run into these issues."
In the end, Wolf said, Hilton corporate leaders made the right decision. But they took too long.
"Hilton may have done the right thing with their latest statement. This should have been their initial approach yesterday when this story broke. I think it took too long for them to get here," he said.
Wolf said Hilton didn't need that long to sort out the problem. "It seems as though they've cut ties with this independently owned and operated hotel, but they needed to do that a lot quicker in my view."
Anyone who is refused service for anything, Wolf said, will feel discriminated against. "It feels discriminatory to me and probably to those ICE agents that [are] there in Minneapolis to protect folks on the streets," he said.
"They're removing criminal illegal aliens," Wolf added. "They're there looking at the fraud that is going on. And when DHS announces that they have removed about a thousand, or arrested a thousand criminals, including pedophiles, including rapists, and others, [that's] what these ICE officers are doing."
Many Americans, Wolf said, are misguided in their priorities. "And for hotels or anyone else to discriminate against them, it's not right," he said. "But again, unfortunately, it's what we've seen on this anti-law enforcement mentality that we see in a lot of these Democratic-run states and cities."
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Jim Mishler ✉
Jim Mishler, a seasoned reporter, anchor and news director, has decades of experience covering crime, politics and environmental issues.
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