A worker at the rental chain demanded to see the American man’s passport, apparently unaware that the island is part of the US
The US rental car giant Hertz has apologized and pledged to retrain its staff after an employee denied a Puerto Rican customer a prepaid vehicle on the mistaken belief that he was from a foreign country and needed a passport.
During the encounter with the customer at New Orleans’s Louis Armstrong international airport, the Hertz employee also called over a law enforcement officer who allegedly threatened to turn the man over to immigration authorities even though Puerto Rico has been a US territory since 1898 and has a representative in Congress as well, according to a stunning report which the CBS correspondent David Begnaud published on Twitter and Instagram late Saturday.
Humberto Marchand’s story, as told to Begnaud, vividly illustrated the prejudice many of the US’s 53 million Spanish speakers face.
Marchand recently traveled to New Orleans and ahead of his trip paid to rent a car from Hertz at the Armstrong airport. After arriving, he went to the Hertz counter and presented his Puerto Rican driver’s license, which contained text in two languages spoken on the island: Spanish and English.
The clerk there then purportedly said to him: “We will need a passport.” Marchand told Begnaud that after he asked the woman what she meant, she made remarks that suggested he was from another country and therefore needed a passport.
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