The truth about ICE and the New England Patriots jets (Go Seahawks)

If you’re anything like the neighbors I’m watching the Super Bowl LX with Sunday, then you probably care more about Bad Bunny’s halftime show than who is playing the game or which team to cheer for.

You should cheer for the Seattle Seahawks. If Seahawks QB Sam Darnold’s Cinderella story or New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft’s extracurricular activities aren’t enough to convince you, let me tell you about the Patriots’ team planes and ICE.

Kraft has owned both of the team’s Boeing 767s, which are kitted out in Patriots livery, through a shell company since 2017. The team doesn’t employ their own flight crew, so they contract with a charter company. This is a common arrangement that works in a few ways: The owner gets a charter crew to fly them around, and on days they aren't using the jet, the charter airline uses it for other customers. The charter company does all the maintenance and parking, and the ultrarich get a massive tax break. (You can thank Trump I for that last part, as ProPublica explains well here.)

For years, the Patriots chartered with Eastern Airlines (no relation to the Eastern Air Lines of yesteryear, other than buying the trademark), and Kraft loved to publicize what the planes were doing on their off hours – flying relief supplies to Haiti after an earthquake, transporting vaccines to El Salvador, and even bringing 1.2 million N95 masks from China to Massachusetts at the beginning of the pandemic.

That all changed in June 2022, when one of the Patriots planes was caught on public flight data doing at least three ICE deportation flights to Honduras.

The Patriots didn’t comment on the flights at the time, but a year later, when Eastern tried to raise their rates, the Patriots canceled the contract and sued. Months later, they announced a new charter partner, Omni Air International.

So, problem solved, right? Uhhhhhhhh, no. Omni is ICE’s sole large-jet provider of notoriously long and cruel deportation flights to Africa and Asia – which have gotten even longer and crueler since Trump returned to office. This includes returning legal asylum-seekers to authoritarian states, sending migrants to prisons in African countries they’ve never even been to, and reports of violence, threats and dangerous safety practices onboard.

MORE: ICE Deportation Flights Are Getting Longer And Crueler

Last April, activist flight trackers spotted one of the Patriots jets landing at Guantánamo Bay, not long after the Trump administration announced it would be sending migrants to the military prison installation. This time, the Patriots spoke up, saying it was a military transport flight and there were no migrants onboard. It also added that the team “is not involved in, nor does it approve, sanction, or coordinate the uses of the aircraft when they are chartered for non-team purposes” – seeming to open up room for the planes being used by Omni for ICE in the future.

For what it’s worth, there are hints in the flight data indicating the Patriots are telling the truth about the Gitmo trips not being for ICE. But I don’t think it matters. Why are they fine with partnering with a company making hundreds of millions of dollars off the suffering of shackled migrants, regardless of whether or not it happens on their planes?

You can find out more about the tangled web linking sports teams and deportation flights from this University of Washington report here. Last November, Avelo Airlines used one of its unbranded deportation planes to transport National Women’s Soccer League athletes after their championship game

And yes, I checked: The Seahawks do not have a team jet and arrived in San Jose for the big game via Atlas Air, a charter airline that doesn’t do ICE flights.

Fly Eagles Seahawks Fly.

Thank you for reading. I am a former Washington Post staff writer, and as far as I know, I’m the only journalist in America covering ICE flights full time. I am committed to keeping this reporting non-paywalled, but if you are able, please sign up for a paid subscription or send me a one-time tip, so I can continue this important work. –Gillian