So who from the federal government is charged for their part of the crime?

> So who from the federal government is charged for their part of the crime?

What crime? The charges were for a civil violation of state consumer protection law, which restricted the behavior of the motel, not ICE.

Even if ICE officials, in the federally-lawful conduct of their duties could be subject to state law, I don't see any indication that they did anything that would have broken the law at issue, which prohibits the disclosure, not the request.

>Even if ICE officials, in the federally-lawful conduct of their duties could be subject to state law, I don't see any indication that they did anything that would have broken the law at issue, which prohibits the disclosure, not the request.

i wonder whether the agents may be breaking any law if say the night manager informed them that he couldn't legally disclose the information, yet the agents would still pressure him into giving it up. Wouldn't the agents thus become participants of a conspiracy to violate that law [IANAL]?

Sorry, I only now got OP‘s intention.

I believe it’s somewhat defensible to task only one side here with protecting the data. They have that data all the time, and it’s therefore more practical for them to explore the legality of such requests. They are also the party entrusted with that data by the customer, and therefore have a fiduciary duty. It also aligns with the idea of those profiting from data to accept liability for its protection.

There’s probably also a federal/state law angle here that I’m unqualified to opine on.

Also: this is civil law, and therefore nobody was or will be charged (just a pet peeve).

ICE didn't commit a crime...It is not illegal for government agencies to request information from individuals or companies.

Nor did Motel 6 for that matter. It was hit with a civil lawsuit...

This is where the laws need to be tightened -- people tend to not know what their rights or obligations are, and have to rely on expensive professionals to advise them (and it can still go wrong). When a government agent makes a request, often it can come across as a demand, with the implication that your are required by law to comply (they can even lie to you to get you to comply).

Now in the case of a large business, I would expect that they have the resources to figure out when to comply or when to ask for a warrant. But individuals have a harder time -- imagine getting sued by your employer for complying with a TSA agent's demand that you open your laptop for them to search through, then you get sued or fired because of that. It should always be illegal for a government official to imply that you are required to do something, if that isn't the case (and make it clear that there is no penalty, such as not being to board your plane, for not complying).

"people"

This is a huge motel chain. They operate in a state which defines laws as to how you are allowed to handle your customer's information. Ignorance is not an excuse. I don't see how the individual citizen argument apples here and it's all hypotheticals anyway.

The article doesn't go into detail about how this information was obtained. Did they request it from the official company counsel? Or did they intimidate some night manager who doesn't know the law well enough to protest?

Not illegal, sure, but the lack of warrant may (should) mean the information is inadmissible in court. It's no different than if they stole it.

That really depends on the data, doesn’t it? Say they used oogle Maps to get to your place of business. Fruit of the poisonous tree? What if they broke the license terms on some proprietary navigation software?

It’s also relevant that ICE mostly deals in civil law, not criminal. While illegal entry is also a crime, deportation is a civil enforcement action. The fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine doesn’t quite apply. There might be something similar though, and I’d love someone more knowledgeable to chime in.

> Not illegal, sure, but the lack of warrant may (should) mean the information is inadmissible in court

No, getting evidence voluntarily from any party (or even involuntarily and illegally from a third party!) doesn't trigger the exclusionary rule. No rights triggering the rule are violated in the voluntary case, and if the government violated A’s rights but then use the evidence only against B, the rule doesn't apply either.

And, of course, this is ICE, and the exclusionary rule only applies in criminal cases, not in deportation (civil removal) cases, so the question is largely moot, anyway, even if they were doing this for evidence rather than just to locate targets.

> It's no different than if they stole it.

It's extremely different.

Law enforcement can ask to search in cases where they don't have a warrant or other legal reasons to insist on a search. If you say "yes", the results are admissible. People mess this up all the time when cops pull them over or knock on the door.

If the information was the type covered by an expectation of privacy, then the lack of a warrant likely would make it inadmissible...until ICE asks the judge for a warrant, for a date range covered by the specific enforcement action at issue, and comes back to court with the now lawfully-obtained information.

> If the information was the type covered by an expectation of privacy, then the lack of a warrant likely would make it inadmissible

In a criminal trial, of the person who had the legal expectation of privacy, which in most cases is the person with possession of the documents, etc., not the subject of the documents, where those are different.

But, in any cases, not in most civil proceedings, and explicitly not in civil removal (deportation) proceedings, which is what ICE is mostly concerned with here, so the Constitution is essentially irrelevant as there is no practical remedy available for violations (which is one reason states have adopted rules against information sharing with immigration officials.)

A backdated warrant? Surely that's not legal.

I assume that wouldn't retroactively exonerate Motel 6, right?

In this case it would be immigration court, which is a civil proceeding where the standard of guilt is merely a preponderance of evidence and the defendant has no right to a lawyer if they can’t afford one. I doubt admissibility will actually come up much.

Why does the fact that someone is staying in Motel 6 need to be admitted as evidence in court? People aren't being deported for the crime of booking a room at Motel 6.

Its taxpayers of course.