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(Trends Wide) — Hertz has apologized to a Puerto Rican customer after one of its employees refused to rent him a car he had paid for in advance because he did not show her his passport.
Humberto Marchand said he traveled to New Orleans last Wednesday and presented his Puerto Rican driver’s license at the Hertz counter at Louie Armstrong International Airport. The employee asked for his passport even though, like all Puerto Ricans, Marchand is a US citizen and does not need a passport to rent a car in the country.
Puerto Rico is a commonwealth of the United States, and anyone born on the island is a US citizen by law.
Marchand said the employee, who has not been publicly identified, treated him like a foreigner and told him he couldn’t rent a car without a passport.
“I was surprised and definitely frustrated because it was so late at night, so I decided to file a formal complaint,” Marchand said in an interview with Trends Wide.
In a statement to Trends Wide, Hertz said the company accepts Puerto Rican driver’s licenses from customers renting in the United States without requiring a valid passport.
“We sincerely regret that our policy has not been followed, we have apologized to Mr. Marchand and are refunding his rent,” a company spokesman said. “We are reinforcing our policies with employees to ensure they are understood and followed consistently across all of our locations.”
And video that Marchand recorded and posted on his Twitter account shows the employee asking her to leave while he repeatedly reminds her that her Puerto Rico driver’s license is as valid as those issued in Louisiana or any other state in the US. The employee then threatened to call the Police, to which Marchand replied: “Yes, please call the Police.”
“I told her that she was making a mistake based on ignorance and recorded to make clear my point of view that I was denied as a US citizen because my license is from Puerto Rico. It is a real identification license that by law should be a uniform form of identification within the United States,” Marchand said. “She supported her position and decided to call the police.”
Marchand says a Kenner Police Department officer came to the scene and asked him to leave as well. As he was walking away, he says he heard the police officer threaten to call Border Patrol.
A spokesperson for the Kenner Police Department told Trends Wide they reviewed the agent’s body camera footage and nowhere in the video did he mention Border Patrol, ICE or any other immigration authority.
“There is a specific part on the recording where the officer says something, unrelated to any of the things mentioned above, and clearly Mr. Marchand is misinterpreting it,” Capt. Michael Cunningham told Trends Wide.
Cunningham also noted that the police department will issue a statement regarding this incident and the body camera footage, but did not specify when it will be released.
“I got really nervous because once you call the police you don’t want to escalate the matter to the point where the officer thinks they have to use some kind of force. So I kept a very calm and assertive, but respectful stance.” Marchand said.
It is unclear if Hertz took any disciplinary action against the employee. However, the company said that, like all its employees, it was reminded of its long-standing policy related to Puerto Rico driver’s licenses.
Marchand said he also plans to file a complaint against the Kenner Police Department to ensure its officers are trained to validate real IDs and to review any inappropriate comments about being referred to border authorities that he says were made by the police.
— Trends Wide’s Rafy Rivera in Puerto Rico and Florencia Trucco in Atlanta contributed to this report.
