Want to Fly the Friendly Skies of ICE Air?
CNN offers an inside look at ICE Air, which deports immigrants to their homelands.
Passengers on ICE Air, have one-way tickets. In the past year, the United States has deported nearly 100,000 people on charter planes. With immigration arrests on the rise, the number of deportation flights could grow.
Guatemala is the top foreign destination for ICE Air Operations, the arm of the US government that runs deportation flights.
The CNN story focuses on a 737 flight, one of 10 chartered aircraft in ICE Air’s fleet, used to transport immigration detainees across the United States and remove them to countries around the world.
Over the past year, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, more than 29,000 immigrants who were in the United States illegally have been deported on more than 500 flights from this airport in central Louisiana — one of five hubs for ICE Air.
In many ways, this plane looks like any other passenger jet: the beaming flight attendant with a scarf smartly tied around her neck, the lit-up seatbelt signs, the safety cards stuffed into seat pockets.
Hat tip to Professor Cappy White.
KJ
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