What is ICE Air?

As more people learn that ICE’s secrecy and inhumanity extends to its massive air operation, I wanted to provide this primer to anyone seeking more information about ICE Air. I’m Gillian Brockell, I’m a former Washington Post staff writer, and as far as I’m aware I’m the only journalist covering ICE Air full-time. You can support my work with a paid subscription here or a one-time tip here. If you want to share information with me, please contact me on Signal at gbrockell.44 or email me at gbrockell at proton dot me.

What is ICE Air?

“ICE Air” comprises the charter airlines and military planes that transport captured migrants to detention centers and out of the country. It is more than just deportation flights – removals account for only about a quarter of ICE Air’s flights. They also include domestic “shuffle” flights from cities where migrants are captured to detention centers, and flights between detention centers.

Currently, ICE Air operates about 50 flights a day, including weekends and holidays. All ICE flights are scheduled by ICE Air Operations and its flight broker, CSI Aviation. The vast majority are operated by charter airlines, with a smaller number operated by the U.S. military and foreign airlines.

What are these flights like?

In a word, horrendous. All adult migrants and some children on ICE flights are shackled at the wrists and ankles attached to a chain around their waists for the duration of the flight. Each flight has at least one ICE agent and five to 30 ICE-contracted guards onboard, in addition to a flight nurse and the crew. Flight attendants required by the Federal Aviation Administration are not permitted to interact with migrant passengers.

For years, migrants have reported verbal, physical and sexual abuse by ICE agents and guards onboard ICE flights. Migrants deemed “unruly” can have hoods placed over their heads and/or be put in the straitjacket-like WRAP device. These abuses appear to be more common on removal flights to African countries, indicating racist bias by agents and guards.

On longer ICE flights, meals and water are provided, though often inadequately. Migrants are not permitted to stand, stretch or walk around without permission, which is rarely granted. Many also report soiling themselves in their seats or being unable to maintain hygiene when using the lavatory while shackled.

In December 2017, an ICE flight carrying 92 Somalis sat on the tarmac in Senegal for 24 hours due to a crew timing issue. Passengers were beaten, stomped on, tied up, subjected to taunts and racial slurs, and refused adequate food, water, or bathroom access. One man’s injuries from being beaten were so severe he later needed surgery. Eventually, the flight was forced to return to U.S., where attorneys for the passengers filed a lawsuit, exposing for the first time the cruelties of ICE Air.

ICE keeps records on reported use of force and migrants’ civil rights complaints while onboard ICE Air but does not share this information publicly, and court filings have shown these records to be inadequate. In 2019, the University of Washington obtained these records for 2007 to 2018.

What are the risks of shackling migrant passengers?

Migrant passengers shackled for hours experience excruciating pain, mental injury, swelling, bruising, chafing, cuts, pressure sores, numbness and temporary or permanent nerve damage. They are also at a high risk of developing blood clots that could be deadly in the days after a flight.

Shackling also poses significant risks in the event of an emergency, because they can impede an evacuation and prevent passengers from putting on oxygen masks or life vests. Between 2014 and 2021, at least six ICE flights required emergency evacuations, resulting in injuries and slow evacuations that could have been deadly. It is not known if there have been evacuations since 2021.

In November 2025, an Avelo Airlines ICE flight had to do an emergency landing after the cabin depressurized, and five people were injured. ICE did not report this event; it was exposed by an Avelo employee.

Flight attendants are also prevented from performing cabin walk-throughs required by the FAA, which are supposed to identify mechanical issues or other potentially dangerous situations before they become critical. Flight attendants on ICE flights told ProPublica last year that ICE agents and guards regularly ignore their safety commands, flight nurses do not give passengers in medical distress adequate care, and that in the event of an emergency they were told to leave the migrant passengers to die.

Then why are they shackled?

Good question! Shackling is not necessary for flight safety since all migrant passengers are thoroughly searched before boarding and all commercial aircraft have locked and armored flight deck doors. This practice appears to have started in 2012 – yes, during the Obama administration – for reasons unclear, starting with some adult male passengers, then all males, then all adults. It now includes some children, according to the ICE Air Operations handbook.

Notably, the handbook instructs agents and guards on international flights to remove shackles from departing passengers shortly before landing – the period of highest risk for any flight – belying the claim that shackling is needed for flight safety. Migrants have told me they think ICE removes shackles before landing abroad to hide this inhumane practice from foreign officials.

How much have these flights increased since Trump started his second term?

ICE flights are up 84 percent between Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025 through the calendar year compared with the same period in 2024, according to Human Rights First.

Notably, domestic “shuffle” flights between detention centers have gone up 123 percent. Migrants, activists and immigration attorneys have told me ICE appears to be using frequent, cross-country transfers as a way to punish or wear down migrants in detention, so they will give up on their cases and agree to be deported, and to get more favorable rulings from conservative courts. Frequent transfers cut off migrants from their loved ones and legal counsel; in many cases, they have to start legal filings all over again. ICE maintains that domestic transfers are based largely on capacity and logistics at detention centers.

As dramatic as this increase is, it’s important to note this spike occurred before ICE’s massive funding windfall from the “Big Beautiful Bill” kicked in. ICE flights are likely to skyrocket even more very soon.

How much money are these companies making?

ICE has not shared updated pricing, but a 2023 price list shows most ICE flights cost about $16,000 per flight hour plus expenses like fuel and insurance. ICE flights to Africa and Asia have a “special high risk” rate in the $30,000 per flight hour range. ICE flights operated by military aircraft are also more expensive and can cost up to $28,500 per flight hour, according to Reuters.

ICE’s flight broker, CSI Aviation, received $562 million for ICE flights between March and October 2025. Its current 12-month contract has a potential award amount of $1.5 billion. CSI Aviation’s owners are longtime Republican donors and anti-immigration extremists; one was even investigated for her involvement in the 2020 fake electors scheme, according to the Project on Government Oversight.

How do you track ICE flights?

ICE does not share information about its daily air operations. However, most ICE flights can be reliably identified via public flight data. (I use ADS-B Exchange Premium and FlightRadar24 Gold; some ICE flight trackers also use FlightAware or other sites.) ICE flights have common characteristics including tail numbers, callsigns, flight patterns, origin and destination airports, layover times, etc. Most ICE flights start and end at airports near ICE detention hubs in Alexandria, LA; Mesa, AZ; El Paso and Harlingen, TX.

The ICE Flight Monitor at Human Rights First publishes monthly reports about all likely and confirmed ICE flights. Human Rights First took the reins on this project from longtime ICE flight tracker and genuine hero Tom Cartwright last summer. You can read the Monitor’s reports here. Cartwright’s reports from Jan. 2020 to Aug. 2025 can be found at Witness at the Border.

I heard the FAA blocked flight tracking on ICE planes, is that true?

Not really. The FAA has granted LADD status to ICE Air’s charter airlines, which makes their planes harder to identify on flight-tracking sites that get their flight data from the government. But some sites, like ADS-B Exchange, use independent sources for their flight data and do not obscure aircraft identification. A handful of ICE flights on military aircraft are known to have used transponder signal modes that are difficult to track, or to have flown with their signals turned entirely off; those flights were identified by other means. It is possible additional ICE flights on military aircraft in “dark mode” have escaped detection by flight trackers, though the number of these flights is likely to be very small due to the risk to aviation safety.

I heard ICE is deporting people to countries they’ve never even been to. Is that true?

Yes. “Third-country nationals” are migrants who cannot be deported to their countries of origin because they would face persecution, torture or death, so are subsequently removed to a third country that has agreed to “host” them. This type of removal, rare before Trump, is supposed to provide resettlement in a safe country. What is actually happening to thousands of migrants generally falls under three umbrellas: 1) Migrants are removed to an unsafe country that then forces them to return to their country of origin; 2) Migrants are removed to a prison in an unsafe country that has made a deal with the Trump administration; 3) Migrants are briefly imprisoned in an unsafe country and then forced to return to their country of origin, or forced into a fourth country without travel documents, rendering them effectively stateless.

The transfer of migrants to CECOT in El Salvador is the most well-known incident of third-country removal to foreign prisons, but others have been imprisoned in South Sudan, Eswatini, Rwanda, Ghana, Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon.

You can find out more on my Third-Country Removal Tracker here. For more detail on the legal issues with these removals, go to Third Country Deportation Watch here.

Is third-country removal even legal?

Many of these removals clearly violate both domestic and international law, though the Supreme Court has allowed them to continue within certain parameters as lawsuits make their way through courts. Some of the payments to “host” countries may also be illegal misappropriations of funds.

It’s important to note that ICE does not appear to be following the court’s current parameters, nor its own stated policies, for third-country removals; ACLU recently spoke with non-Mexican migrants in detention at Camp East Montana near El Paso who say they were driven to the border, beaten by masked men, and then ordered to “jump” across into Mexico. Several had to be hospitalized due to their injuries.

If a migrant is a murderer or a pedophile and their own country won’t take them back, like DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin keeps saying, why not send them to a foreign prison?

First, Tricia McLaughlin lies all the time. Second, some of the third-country nationals sent to foreign prisons were legal asylum-seekers with no criminal record. Others had arrests but no convictions, or had nonviolent convictions like conspiracy to commit fraud. Most importantly, all of the people with convictions had completed their sentences, sometimes many years ago. Many had already been living quiet, law-abiding lives until ICE snatched them up and put them on a plane to a place they’d never been. It is wrong, legally and morally, to re-imprison someone without a new charge. Many of the prisons these migrants have been sent to have been declared torture facilities by the State Department.

One more thing: Some of the countries McLaughlin claimed had refused to accept their own citizens say they were never contacted, or were contacted only a few hours before the ICE flights to these prisons took off. (Tricia McLaughlin lies all the time.)

I heard DHS is buying its own deportation planes. Is that true?

Yes. DHS has a $140 million contract with Daedalus Aviation to facilitate the purchase of six Boeing 737s for the department's own migrant-removal operation. Daedalus recently purchased at least four aircraft from Avelo Airlines. However, there is a lot more to standing up an airline than buying planes, and it is still unclear if DHS plans to use contract crew, military crew, or train its own crew. Daedalus was founded last year by MAGA-aligned medical professionals who used to work in the State Department’s medevac unit and have no airline industry experience.

I heard they are throwing shackled migrants out of planes into the ocean. Is that true?

There is absolutely no evidence ICE is throwing migrants out of airplanes. This rumor originated in July with a TikTok user with no experience tracking ICE flights, who provided no evidence and spent more time in her video complaining about being “shadow-banned” than talking about migrants. Her claim that flight data shows deportation planes flying out to the middle of the ocean and then returning is false. Her claim the bodies of five shackled migrants washing up on a beach in Italy is also false. She appears to be referring to instances of bound bodies found floating off the eastern coast of Spain. These were likely migrants from North Africa trying to get to Europe by boat and were probably killed by human traffickers. Thousands of migrants die every year trying cross the Mediterranean Sea, according to the International Organization on Migration.

Lastly, the types of aircraft used by ICE charter airlines cannot be opened in the air. Air Force aircraft occasionally used for deportations that can be opened have not flown anywhere near where the bodies were found, and Coast Guard planes used for domestic ICE flights that can be opened do not fly over open water.

What is happening to migrants on ICE flights is bad enough, and making shit up or spreading unverified rumors doesn’t help them at all.

Can my blue-state airport refuse ICE flights clearance to land?

Unfortunately, no. In 2019, local officials in Washington state attempted to stop ICE flights landing at Seattle’s Boeing Field via county executive order. The Department of Justice challenged the order, with a judge ruling in 2023 that public-use airports cannot refuse aircraft operated by or on behalf of the federal government.

In response, county officials now require all ICE flights at Boeing Field to load and unload on a public livestream, which has provided invaluable information to immigration attorneys and activists, and hopefully prevents some abuse by ICE agents and guards. (Though not all of it, see below video.)

What can I do?

Demand the administrators of airports in your state set up public livestreams for ICE flights and cancel contracts with ICE Air partners. Support Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s TRACK ICE Act, which would require ICE to release flight data and report uses of force on ICE flights. Spread the word about conditions on ICE flights. Donate to nonprofits and funds that help migrants in detention. Tell the FAA and your lawmakers that shackling on ICE flights should stop immediately. Protest outside companies that partner with ICE Air, and demand their investors divest (that means you, Bill Gates). Observe ICE flight transfers at your local airport and document what you see – you can contact JJ in DC on Bluesky for public-observation points and flight forecasts.

If you are an airline worker, tell your union to demand the FAA enforce federal aviation regulations on ICE flights. Help pilots and flight attendants for ICE Air charter airlines find new jobs. And if you work for one of these companies, you can send me information anonymously on Signal at gbrockell.44, or via encrypted email at gbrockell at proton dot me.

Name and shame! What companies are working with ICE Air?

The airlines currently flying for ICE Air are: Global X Air, Eastern Airlines/Eastern Air Express, Key Lime Air/Denver Air Connection, Omni Air International and Journey Aviation. Avelo Airlines still flies for ICE but is expected to stop soon. Air Transport Service/Gryphon operated ICE flights in 2025, likely including at least one third-country removal to Rwanda, but appears to have stopped.

International airlines that have coordinated with ICE on transfer removals of asylum-seekers include: Egyptair, Qatar Airways, Kuwait Airways, Conviasa, and Panama Air.

Other companies that assist ICE flights include: AGI, Million Air and Signature Aviation (ground services/fueling); Akima Global Services and GEO Group (flight guards); and CSI Aviation (flight broker). GEO Group’s transportation subsidiary also provides buses between detention centers and airports, and they do a terrible job. Many migrants report sitting on buses on the tarmac for as long as 24 hours with no food or water and sometimes no toilet.

Where can I learn more?

You can read ICE Flight Monitor’s monthly reports here. On Bluesky, I recommend following JJ in DC, lalabote, and the ICE Flight Monitor accounts. JJ also posts an ICE flight forecast to Youtube on weekdays.

Here are links to all of my ICE flight reporting, in reverse chronological order:

ICE Air’s Sloppy, Dangerous Deportation Flights | THE AMERICAN PROSPECT

Tracking All of Trump’s Third-Country Removals (That We Know Of)

This Family Made Billions on Trump-Branded Condos. Now Their Private Jet Is Taking Shackled Migrants to a Far-Flung African Prison | ZETEO

ICE Is Deporting People to Africa on Nearly Un-Trackable Flights | ROLLING STONE

ICE Is Constantly Using Coast Guard Planes to Move Immigrants | ROLLING STONE

Tracking ICE Removal Flights | IT COULD HAPPEN HERE

ICE May Have Secretly Done More Third-Country Removals Than Previously Known

ICE's Eswatini Flight Went Through US Base in Djibouti; Americans Stationed There Are Angry

Rendition by Private Jet | IT COULD HAPPEN HERE

A Private Jet to Hell