An ICE deportation flight with 100 detainees on board flew into a Boston area airport during a severe snowstorm, turning what was meant to be a short refuelling stop before a transatlantic flight into a 24-hour delay, with everyone on the plane trapped on the tarmac for half a day.
Airport officials at Portsmouth International Airport (PME), located in Pease, New Hampshire, were given just 15 minutes’ advanced notice that the plane was going to make a stopover.
If they had been given more notice, they say they would have advised the pilots to land elsewhere because the conditions at the airport were so bad. Instead, high winds and freezing temperatures stranded the aircraft in Pease.
The ICE deportation flight was operated by Omni Air International, a charter airline that has an ongoing contract with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for immigrant removals from the United States.
Publicly available flight records show that the Boeing 767 took off from Valley International Airport near Harlingen, Texas, home of a major ICE field office.
The aircraft landed at PME just after 1 am on Monday, but was then grounded until 8 am on Tuesday when it managed to depart the airport for Sofia, Bulgaria. From Bulgaria, it continued onwards to Doha International Airport, Qatar, which suggests that immigrants were being removed to several different countries.
After landing in PME, everyone was forced to remain on board until 2:45 pm on Monday, when the airport terminal was closed to the public and the detainees were transferred to the terminal building.
In a statement provided to local news station WBAL, the airport’s refuelling provider, Port City Air, commented: “It is our legal obligation to safely service any flights into or out of the airport.”
Word quickly got out about the plane’s arrival in Pease, and some local people took part in a protest outside the airport. No arrests were made.
Last month, low-cost carrier Avelo Airlines announced that it was ditching its contract with ICE to carry out deportation flights on behalf of the agency after taking significant flak from passengers who had called for a boycott of the airline.
Chief executive, Andrew Levy, had signed the contract with ICE after “significant deliberations” to secure additional revenue for the airline. The airline had set up a base at Mesa Gateway Airport in Arizona just for the deportation operation, but this is now being shuttered.
In order to avoid a public backlash over the contract, Avelo adopted an all-white paint job for the planes assigned to deportation flights to make them harder to identify as belonging to Avelo.
Along with Omni Air International, one of the most prolific deportation flight operators is GlobalX, a charter airline based in Miami, Florida.
Late last year, DHS confirmed that it was buying six planes at a cost of around $140 million to run its own deportation airline. Deportation flights are coordinated through an internal department known as ICE Air Operations (IAO), although most flights are subcontracted out to private carriers.
Surely there were other flights delayed or canceled, no? Why focus on this one?
Why not?