Budget Airline Launches Deportation Flights for ICE from Arizona

Phoenix — On Monday, a low-cost airline that primarily serves smaller cities in the United States began operating federal deportation flights out of Arizona. This action has prompted a petition for a boycott to be submitted online and has been met with harsh condemnation from the union that represents the flight attendants of the airline.

For the month of April, Avelo Airlines made the announcement that it has signed a contract with the Department of Homeland Security to operate charter deportation flights from Mesa Gateway Airport, which is located outside of Phoenix. The company has stated that it will be using three Boeing 737-800 aircraft for the flights.

There are a number of businesses that are looking to capitalize on President Donald Trump’s campaign for mass deportations, and the airline that is based in Houston is one of them.

Beginning the previous month, members of Congress began deliberating on a tax measure with the intention of supporting, in part, the removal of one million immigrants annually and detaining one hundred thousand people in detention centers located in the United States. The Republican plan proposes increasing the number of officers and investigators working for the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement by 10,000.

The specifics of Avelo’s arrangement with ICE have not been made public.

Avelo was introduced in 2021, during a time when COVID-19 was still raging and large airlines were receiving billions of dollars in subsidies from the government. One of the primary ways in which it saves money is by operating vintage Boeing 737 jets, which can be purchased at comparatively inexpensive prices. Additionally, it operates out of secondary airports that are less busy and less expensive, and it makes use of flight routes that are not utilized by the major airlines. At the end of the year 2023, it reported that it had its first profitable quarter.

As part of the announcement of the arrangement that took place a month ago, Andrew Levy, the founder and chief executive officer of Avelo, stated that the airline’s work with ICE would assist the company in expanding and protecting jobs.

“We recognize that this is a sensitive and complicated topic,” said Levy, a veteran of the airline industry who has served as a senior executive at United and Allegiant airlines in the past.

The Associated Press attempted to do an interview with Avelo, but he declined the request.

There has been no public disclosure of the financial and other particulars of the Avelo deal, including the destinations of the flights that are being used for deportation. Both Avelo and ICE were asked to give a copy of the agreement by the Associated Press; however, neither of them did so. With regard to the contract, the airline stated that it was not authorized to release it.

The association of deportations, a highly combustible issue that has the potential to drive away customers, has been avoided by a number of consumer businesses. The authorities placed migrant children in hotels during the first term of President Trump’s administration, which prompted some hotel companies to announce that they would not participate in the program.

Safety issues are cited by the union.

The Geo Group and Core Civic, two companies that supply services to detention centers, are examples of businesses in the deportation industry that rely on consumer branding to a limited extent. Not Avelo, whose action sparked a boycott petition on change.org and prompted criticism from the union representing flight attendants for the airline. The union emphasized the difficulty of evacuating deportees from an aircraft in an emergency situation within the legal minimum of ninety seconds or fewer.

According to a statement released by the Association of aircraft Attendants-CWA, “having an entire flight of people handcuffed and shackled would make any evacuation more difficult and would put innocent people at risk of injury or death.” Additionally, it hinders our capacity to respond to a medical emergency, a fire on board, decompression, and other similar situations. We are unable to do our duties under these circumstances.

Within the city of New Haven, Connecticut, where Avelo operates out of Tweed New Haven Airport, the Democratic Mayor Justin Elicker requested the CEO of Avelo to reconsider their decision. Elicker remarked in a statement that “this business decision is antithetical to New Haven’s values.” This statement was made in reference to the fact that the company in question promotes itself as “New Haven’s hometown airline.”

Monday saw demonstrations taking place in front of airports in the states of Arizona and Connecticut.

A group of more than thirty individuals gathered on a route that leads up to the airport in Mesa, Arizona, brandishing signs that condemned the deportation attempts of President Trump. In the state of Connecticut, approximately 150 individuals gathered in front of the Tweed New Haven Airport to demand that passengers refrain from purchasing Avelo.

Protesters are hoping to provide a financial incentive for Avelo to back out of its work for the federal government, according to John Jairo Lugo, who is the co-founder and community organizing director of Unidad Latina en Acción in New Haven.

“We need to cause some economic damage to the company in order to really convince them that they should be on the side with the people and not with the government,” Lugo said. “We need to convince them that they should represent the people.”

One of the five hubs for the deportation operations of ICE airlines is located in Mesa.

ICE Air, the immigration agency’s air transport program for deportations, has five hubs, one of which is the suburb of Mesa, which is located in Phoenix and has a population of approximately 500,000 people. This information comes from the advocacy group Witness at the Border, which reports that ICE Air operated approximately 8,000 flights over the course of a year, up to April.

This information was provided by Tom Cartwright, who is responsible for tracking flight data for Witness at the Border. ICE has a contract with an air broker known as CSI Aviation, which hires two charter carriers known as GlobalX and Eastern Air Express to handle the majority of the flights.

Cartwright stated that in recent years, it has been out of the ordinary for commercial passenger companies to operate flights for the purpose of deportation.

The airlines have not been typical commercial carriers, or what I refer to as retail carriers, who are selling their own tickets, according to Cartwright. “It has always been with an air broker who then hires the carriers,” Cartwright added. At the very least, ever since I became involved in the process of tracking ICE flights, every single one of them has been charter businesses.

Under the terms of a contract held by CSI Aviation, which is situated in New Mexico, Avelo will serve as a sub-carrier. The company did not provide a response to inquiries regarding the amount of money that Avelo would make under the deal.

In addition to providing passenger service to more than fifty cities in the United States, Avelo also operates passengers to destinations in Jamaica, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic. He stated that Avelo does not provide regular commercial passenger service out of Mesa Gateway Airport, according to Ryan Smith, who is the airport’s spokesperson.

Although Avelo did not offer any specifics, the company announced in February 2024 that it had achieved its first profitable quarter. During an interview with the Associated Press that took place two months later, Levy declined to release any numbers, stating that the airline was a private enterprise and so had no need to disclose such information to the general public. Susan Haigh, a journalist for the Associated Press based in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed to this article using her expertise.

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