Under the radar: How charter airlines fly ICE deportees at MSP

[question everything]

A hidden new line of business is growing for charter airlines operating at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport — the ICE “shuffle” flight. Here’s how it works: Department of Homeland Security vans shuttle ICE arrestees to the southern end of the airport. Authorities lay out shackles on the tarmac. People are unloaded and put in the restraints. Then the detainees board a charter flight that will shuffle them to an undisclosed staging area for deportation from the U.S.

Many of these flights don’t appear on public air traffic-tracking apps, and most of the charter airlines offering this type of service are little-known. Passenger figures are not reported to airport authorities. The trips could mostly escape public attention if not for people like Nick Benson, an activist and professional airplane tracker with a 6-foot antenna attached to his roof in Burnsville.

Benson is a member of a network of aviation enthusiasts scattered around the country who have the equipment and technical know-how to read data emitted by passing airplanes and feed the information to aggregators that provide modern-day live flight observation.

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Some airlines operating for ICE use government data privacy requests to mask aircraft from popular radars like FlightAware and flightradar24.com. But radio antennae, feeding open-source networks online, provide a closer look into the business of ICE Air Operations. Deportation operations at MSP are conducted at the behest of the federal government and are heavily reliant on a group of small, mostly private airlines and flight crews that specialize in transporting the detainees. The Department of Homeland Security said ICE agents have arrested more than 400 people in Minnesota, many of whom will eventually be deported.

(snip)

So far this year, four airlines — Key Lime Air, Global Crossings, Eastern Airlines and Avelo Airlines — have conducted ICE flights at MSP, according to data from Human Rights First, which maintains an “ICE Flight Monitor” that relies on open-source flight trackers.

https://www.startribune.com/under-the-radar-how-charter-airlines-fly-ice-deportees-at-msp/601540968

https://archive.ph/abDDk

[OldBaldy1701E]

1. I kind of wish that the reporters did not feel the need to identify people like Mr. Benson.

Especially when they don't seem interested in identifying any ICE animals, even when they are engaged in illegal activity.