What Hilton’s ICE surrender tells us about corporate cowardice in Trump 2.0

This post originally appeared in Mike Hower’s Substack, The Sustainability Story, on January 5, 2026. Read it and subscribe here.

Last week during my regularly scheduled morning coffee and doomscrolling, I clicked a headline that caught my eye: “Hilton drops Minneapolis hotel over cancelled ICE bookings.”

It was a clear example of how quickly a company’s sustainability rhetoric collapses when the Trump Administration attacks. Precisely the kind of corporate cowardice I’d recently cautioned against—while calling for 2026 to be the “Year of Courage.”

We’re not off to a strong start.

A Hampton Inn in Lakeville, Minnesota—part of the Hilton system—had refused to host U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents involved in a major operation terrorizing targeting local immigrant communities. Hotel staff emailed the agents directly to say they weren’t allowing ICE or immigration officers to stay at the property.

The Trump Administration’s response was as swift as it was melodramatic. The Department of Homeland Security attacked Hilton on X, accusing it of participating in a “coordinated campaign” to deny service. The Trump Administration pulled the hotel from federal lodging programs. A conservative influencer showed up in the lobby with a camera. Hilton’s stock dropped 2%.

The next day, Hilton did something remarkable: it fought back. Reaffirming its corporate values, Hilton released a statement condemning the Trump Administration’s attacks on immigrant communities: “We believe hospitality should be a force for good in the world, and we stand behind our franchisee’s courageous decision to—”

Just kidding. That didn’t happen. Hilton buckled immediately and terminated its franchise agreement with the property.

Hilton had done the math, and chose to prioritize profit over purpose. The company decided that holding on to lucrative federal business was worth abandoning its stated sustainability values.

What made this particularly ironic was that in 2020, Hilton actually had taken a public stand against ICE. When reports emerged that a Hampton Inn in Texas was being used to house migrant children before deportation, Hilton declared: “Our policy has always been that hotels should not be used as detention centers or for detaining individuals. We expect all Hilton properties to reject business that would use a hotel in this way.”

And in Hilton’s 2024 sustainability report, CEO Chris Nassetta wrote that the company “was founded on the belief that hospitality could be a force for good in the world.” Sounds great. But when push came to shove, Hilton went belly up.

And what happened next reinforced why Hilton should’ve stood by its franchisee in opposing ICE’s cruelty. The story turned deadly.

Just a few hours after I finished reading the Hilton article, the situation in Minnesota exploded when an ICE agent killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old American citizen, in cold blood: He shot her in the face three times, called her a “stupid b*tch,” and walked away casually as if it was just another day at the office. All of this was caught clearly on camera and witnessed by dozens of people who were there.

The Trump Administration immediately began doing what it does best: lie.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called it “domestic terrorism” and declared the shooting justified, saying the agent “followed his training” and “acted in defense of his life.” Vice President JD Vance said Good’s death was “a tragedy of her own making.” The White House doubled down, announcing it would send additional ICE agents to Minnesota so the operation could “continue safely.” Meanwhile, the conservative propaganda apparatus performed astounding mental gymnastics to justify the defenseless woman’s killing.

Local officials weren’t having it. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called the self-defense claim “bullshit.” Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said what many of us were thinking: “We’ve been warning for weeks that the Trump administration’s dangerous, sensationalized operations are a threat to our public safety, that someone was going to get hurt.”

Indeed, Trump’s deployment of thousands of ICE agents—the largest such operation in U.S. history—under the guise of combating welfare fraud has turned into a widespread effort to racially profile Minneapolis’ Somali community—one which Trump has called “garbage” who “contribute nothing.” Never mind that the vast majority are American citizens.

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara, a 25-year law enforcement veteran, was even more direct. In an interview with The New York Times, he called the shooting “predictable and entirely preventable,” criticized ICE’s “very, very questionable tactics,” and noted that basic police training says you don’t place yourself in the path of a vehicle—”that’s traffic stop 101.” Asked whether the situation would have been handled differently by Minneapolis police officers rather than ICE agents, O’Hara answered: “No question.”

ICE, like the Trump Administration itself, is out of control. The hotel that stood by Hilton’s professed corporate values by refusing ICE agents was punished within 24 hours. The angry agent who killed a scared, unarmed woman trying to escape with her dog in the backseat likely will face zero consequences.

Good’s death moved me to post about ICE, Hilton, and what happened on LinkedIn. The post struck a chord—it became one of my most engaged posts ever, and inspired this deeper dive.

To be fair, what’s happening in this country has grown well beyond corporate sustainability’s remit. It’s dubious that Hilton’s sustainability team was consulted about any of these decisions—or that it even agrees with the company’s business dealings with ICE.

As NYU Stern professor Alison Taylor pointed out in a comment on my LinkedIn post, this is about corporate ethics, not sustainability.

But if the sustainability function isn’t responsible for ethics, who is?

While I’ve been picking on Hilton, they aren’t the only major corporation profiting off of ICE’s atrocities. Other companies with ICE contracts include Amazon, AT&T, Comcast, UPS, Dell, and FedEx—each of which touts its commitment to sustainable business values.

Each of these companies should consider the long term harm these dealings will have on their reputations, especially if they want to be taken seriously as sustainability leaders. While Hilton’s stock may have bounced back, the jury’s out on the long term reputational damage this ordeal will inflict. After Good’s death, protestors descended on another Hilton property believed to be housing the ICE agents. And, as of this writing, Hilton still hasn’t issued any official communication about what’s happening in Minnesota.

As ICE’s operations continue to expand, things are going to get much worse before they get better. ICE is already well on its way to becoming a secret police with zero accountability and ultimate loyalty to a president—who, let’s not forget, is a convicted felon—who claims to have absolute power limited only by his “own morality.”

But in trying to appease a temporary stakeholder—an unhinged U.S. president elected to a four-year term—companies like Hilton are disappointing more enduring ones, and especially the American people.

Sustainability professionals tend to get squirrelly around “politics”—but this is no longer political. It’s existential. It’s about if a free society, and by extension, a free market, continues—or “perishes from this earth.”

As I wrote on LinkedIn: “What’s happening right now in this country isn’t normal. We mustn’t normalize it. Ever.

The pendulum will swing back. And when it does, there’s going to be a reputational reckoning for those companies that lacked the courage to stand on the right side of history.”