Shut Down ICE & CBP Collaborators
Corporations that collaborate with ICE and Border Patrol must be confronted and disrupted.
By Lalo Cuitzeo
"Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected."
– Sun Tzu, the Art of War
Collaboration from private corporations is essential to the daily operations of the US detention and deportation machine. Tracking down and confronting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents engaging in abductions can be difficult to arrive to in time, and leads to higher risk of arrest and injury. But corporate targets have stationary addresses and often lower defensive capabilities. People willing to take action must raise the social costs of any entity that assists ICE and CBP.
Corporations like Geo Group and Global X Air directly facilitate detentions and deportations, while tech companies provide the software used to track and target immigrants for abduction. Another such example is Hilton Hotels and Resorts, who provide ideological and logistical support to ICE and CBP. They do so by welcoming its agents to stay there, as well as punishing subsidiaries for taking actions in support of immigrant communities. For these reasons, the Doubletree by Hilton Olympia was targeted on March 28, 2026.
This action was done in solidarity with other anti-ICE and CBP protests of early 2026, with particular connection to resistance efforts in Minneapolis and the surrounding areas. During the Department of Homeland Security’s siege of the Twin Cities, known as Operation Metro Surge, Hilton Hotels became a consistent focus of protest. ICE and CBP were known to stay at various Hilton hotels throughout this time period. Hilton Hotels also publicly severed ties with an affiliated Hampton Inn in Lakeville, Minnesota, after a well-publicized action by staff who allegedly canceled a reservation made by immigration enforcement officers.
Minnesotans spent many cold nights protesting outside multiple Hilton hotels, where a large number of immigration agents stayed. This strategy spread to comrades in New York City, who mobilized on January 27, 2026, three days after the killing of Alex Pretti by CBP. In Manhattan, dozens of protesters occupied the lobby of a Tribeca Hilton hotel, where federal immigration agents had previously lodged.
In solidarity with those who had taken a stand against Hilton’s complicity with ICE and CBP, the Palestine Action of the South Sound (PASS) Direct Action Committee planned a march to the Olympia Hilton Doubletree. Scheduled for Saturday March 28, 2026, this demonstration would take place immediately following the No Kings rally at the State Capitol Building, where hundreds of flyers were handed out to attendees. The action was also previously promoted throughout town with physical flyers, and spread through social media and personal invites.
The march began around 2:40pm, with a crowd of about 250 people. Protestors marched down Capitol Way, picking up energy and steam as they chanted and distributed literature, inviting nearby spectators to join. Bike cops followed closely, surveilling the crowd that had taken over the entire street with no permit. The group intentionally did not seek a permit because permission is not needed when demanding justice and liberation. The loud chants continued as the protestors approached the target of the march, the Hilton Doubletree, and filled the parking lot. Representatives from the Direct Action Committee entered the hotel to confront hotel management while the noisy crowd rallied just outside the lobby.
They delivered the following demands:
Release a public statement and commit to not house or otherwise support ICE and CBP through the Olympia Double Tree Hotel.
De-affiliate from the Hilton Brand.
This action against Hilton and similar ones across the nation are continuations of a long history of directly targeting companies who profit from suffering. For example, in 1960, 4 Black college students staged a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth’s store lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. The protest sparked six months of sit-ins, demonstrations and public pressure until Woolworth’s, the store targeted by the demonstrations, formally desegregated.
The Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement holds relevance as well, as it began in the 1970’s as a way of combating apartheid in South Africa. An international solidarity campaign would target businesses, cultural institutions, and nations complicit in supporting the apartheid regime, which was eventually brought down.
The majority of immigrant detainees are imprisoned in detention centers operated by private prison companies like Geo Group and CoreCivic who contract with ICE. Geo Group operates the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) in Tacoma, WA on behalf of ICE. Deportation and detainee transfer flights out of King County Airport are a joint venture between ICE and private airlines like: Global X, Eastern Air Express, World Atlantic, Avelo, and more. Sky Service is the Fixed-Base Operator (FBO) that provides the fueling, runway support and other key assistance for these ICE flights. La Resistencia, an undocumented led organization, confronts these corporations, fighting to shut down the NWDC, to end to all immigrant detention and deportations, and to stop deportation flights out of King County Airport (BFI).
In 2019 people in Olympia and Seattle led actions targeting ICE collaborators, disrupting financial institutions like US Bank, Blackrock, Bank of America, Bank of the West, and other collaborators involved in the detention and deportation machine. The following year Olympians disrupted UPS and the AT&T inside the Capital Mall for their involvement.
In 2025, Olympia activists again marched into the Capital Mall to demand Verizon and AT&T cut ties with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Even small collaborating businesses should be targeted for actions as well. Comrades in Tucson disrupted a local auto repair shop called TCR II Suspension Brake and Alignment, for servicing Border Patrol vehicles in 2026.
These are just a few of the many instances of people taking action against companies that profit off of the misery that ICE and CBP inflict.
ICE and CBP cannot presently function without collaboration from corporate profiteers in the private sector. Hilton Hotels is just one of the many corporations that are complicit. Like other mechanisms of oppression, the detention and deportation system utilize infrastructure that can be disrupted. Just as ICE and CBP must be confronted, so too must the collaborating businesses that enable them. Continuous pressure on these corporate profiteers can lead to divestment which will slow down the machine, providing momentum to the resistance. Relentless and diverse actions against ICE, CBP, and its profiteers by people across the land can bring the system to a halt and create a society where people have freedom of movement and families stay together.
References:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/12/31/trump-denaturalization-citizenship-somali-americans-minnesota-fraud/87970217007/
https://www.sitinmovement.org/museum-news/post/1996202/woolworth-s-lunch-counter-sit-in-remembered-by-those-who-witnessed-history
https://laresistencianw.org/
https://itsgoingdown.org/july-8th-12th-week-of-action-shut-down-i-c-e-profiteers/
https://pugetsoundanarchists.org/seattle-wa-rolling-picket-shuts-down-ice-profiteers/