It Could Happen Here - Tracking ICE Removal Flights

Episode Date: July 22, 2025

James is joined once again by Gillian Brockell to discuss the use of private jets to rendition migrants to Africa, safety on ICE Air flights, and commercial airlines who fly for ICE. Sources/Links: https://hardghistory.ghost.io/exclusive-ice-may-have-secretly-done-more-third-country-removals-than-previously-known/https://hardghistory.ghost.io/new-ices-eswatini-flight-went-through-us-base-in-djibouti-americans-stationed-there-are-angry/https://hardghistory.ghost.io/a-call-to-action-for-airline-workers-to-stop-ices-deportation-machine/ https://thedawn.com.ss/2025/07/10/govt-places-8-u-s-deportees-behind-bars-in-juba/ witnessattheborder.orghttps://www.propublica.org/article/inside-ice-air-deportation-flightshttps://www.pogo.org/investigations/meet-the-ice-contractor-running-deportation-flightshttps://capitalandmain.com/a-drunk-mechanic-shackled-immigrants-a-crash-landing-the-dangers-of-ice-flightshttps://alexplank.substack.com/p/photos-shackled-migrant-escortedhttps://globe.adsbexchange.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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But then I see, my son's not moving. So we started digging and uncovered city officials bent on protecting their own. Listen to Finding Sexy Sweat on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Call zone media. Hi everyone and welcome to It Could Happen here. We are joined once again by Gillian Brokelle, who is once again going to talk to us about the terrible actually world of deportation flights, how we can track them, what we can learn from following them and what it tells us about the US's massive deportation regime. Welcome back. Thanks

for joining us. Thank you for having me, James. I appreciate it. You're welcome. All right, let's get going here because we've got a lot to cover. There have been a lot of planes deporting people. Deporting and removing. So we've really stopped saying deporting because we don't know who hasn't gotten due process and who does and does not actually belong to the country they're being sent to. Yeah, in many cases it's more like what we saw in the extraordinary rendition. Very much so. Kind of war on Terry, I think that's probably a better way to describe it. So yeah, let's start out, I suppose, with Djibouti. Yeah. So the eight men that were sent to Djibouti, that's the flight I first tracked on May 20th. They were taken on a Gulfstream 5, operated by Journey Aviation from Harlingen, Texas to Shannon Airport in Ireland. And I called the cops in Ireland to try and stop it,

didn't work. And then they went to a US military base in Djibouti where a judge had ordered them to remain while he considered their case. So those men are now in South Sudan where Trump wanted to send them. They were held in Djibouti for six weeks. We know from court filings that they were held inside a shipping container in a far corner of the base near

a burn pit where the trash for the base was burned and that smoke from this pit was getting into the shipping container through the vents and causing the men and the ice guards to cough and feel ill. There was also an independent journalist named Alex Planck who got a photo from a source on the base showing one of the detainees shackled at the ankles and being escorted by an ice guard to the restroom because the shipping container did not have its own restroom. And he said that most of the members of the military at the base didn't even know that they were there.

And this base is generally considered like one of the worst assignments to get when you're in the military. Plonk said he talked to a defense contractor who said that they stopped sending their employees to that base because it was just too terrible. So during the six week period, I and other flight trackers, we tracked five trips by round trip trips by Journey Aviation jets to and from their base in Miami and Djibouti, all traveling through Shannon. Presumably these were flights that were swapping out ICE guards, but we really don't know because ICE does not provide any information about its air operations. Everything we know is

through court filings and through open source intelligence, like the ADSB exchange. Then on July 3rd, the Supreme Court cleared the way for these third country removals and this one specifically to South Sudan. All of us flight trackers were watching the airspace really closely and we knew that one of Journey's jets was already there on the ground in Djibouti. So that's what we were looking for. But then on the evening of Julyibouti. So that's what we were looking for. But then on the

evening of July 5th, about two days later, DHS announced that it was done. They had removed the detainees to South Sudan via a military flight earlier that day. And I have gone over the air traffic data for that region six times on the ADSB exchange. And I haven't been able to spot this military flight. And granted Djibouti is a real ADSB dead zone, but Juba isn't, Juba actually has quite good coverage. And, you know, Addis Ababa also has very good coverage, which they would have had to fly over. So it's clear to me that this military flight, if it happened, as DHS claims, probably flew

the entire trip with its transponder turned off, which is something that the military can do. But it's not standard. I think people would be surprised how rare actually it is for military flights to do that. Unless they're going on a combat or a spy mission, most military aircraft fly with their transponders on. So if you think about the Iran air strikes a couple of weeks ago, the week before the air strikes, there were 32 globe masters and

strata tankers that flew from the US to bases in Europe in a single night that like every av geek was like, whoa, you know, and we knew that that happened because they flew with their transponders on, even though it made it really obvious that some kind of military operation was probably imminent. And then even during the airstrikes, these aircraft would take off from Europe with their transponders on, turn them off over the Mediterranean when they were heading east, do whatever they were doing, and then turn them back on when they were headed back toward Europe. So even part of the combat mission, they still have their transponders on.

Yeah. So the fact that the flight to South Sudan, which was not a combat or a spy mission, appears to have flown the entire trip with its transponder off is quite notable to me. And, you know, I see it as an extension of ISIS tactics on the ground where they are covering their faces and refusing to identify themselves. But I'm, you know, kind of surprised that they got the military to go along with that. Yeah. If it was really a military flight relic, it could be something kind of military adjacent, like some DHS or other government aircraft.

Right, I mean, we don't know. Yeah, we don't know. They said it happened by a military flight on this date, but we don't know. Yeah. So on July 8, the spokesperson for the South Sudanese government told the AP that the men were there and that they were, quote, under the care of the relevant authorities who are screening them and ensuring their safety and wellbeing. We have no idea what that means.

Does that mean they're in prison there? Does that mean that they are, you know, going to be sent to their countries of origin as they claimed at one point? We have no idea. And then just a few minutes ago, we're recording this on Basile Day, July 14th, the same plane that first took these men to Djibouti was scheduled to take off from El Paso for Shannon Airport in Ireland once again. Where it goes after that. Well, you might know by the time you hear this, but right now it's anyone's guess. Yeah. It's baffling. Some of this stuff like the deportations to, or not deportations,

like rendition to South Sudan, right? Like even Homan, who's Trump's quote unquote borders are or immigrations are, seems to be asserting that he has no idea what's happened to them once they've landed there. Like at one point they suggested that they didn't think they would be detained, but like, did they just let them out onto the street? And I mean, when people are released from custody in the United States, that's exactly what they do, right?

They let them out onto the street. Like a lot of volunteers here in San Diego have spent a lot of time, you know, because often people are released without, sometimes they're released without religious garments, which are very important to them. Often they're released without any sort of orientation as like, you know, where are they, how do they get where they're going? Can they afford a flight? You know, how do they book a flight? Do they have the relevant documents to book a flight? Like it's a complete clusterfuck. And that's it in the US. Right. And I mean, think about it, if you're like, Laotian or Vietnamese man in your 50s or 60s, which a lot of these men are older gentlemen, and you're what just like, led out into the streets of Juba, which is, you know, a big city,

but there's a lot of instability in this country, like, what are you going to do? You don't speak Dinka? Like what? You know? Yeah, you're very vulnerable. Very vulnerable. And you probably don't have any material resources. It's not like you can get your credit card, take out much money and fly somewhere else. Nor do these people really have, in many cases, anywhere to go, right? Like the reason that they've been taken to third countries is generally that they have withholding of removal or convention against torture claims that they can't be removed to their home countries. Since we recorded this, we have found out that people in South Sudan are being detained according to an outlet called the Daily with the South Sudanese outlet. those people are incarcerated in South Sudan. Like the man from Myanmar, you know, they're arguing that, you know, I suppose, oh, we can't

send him to Myanmar. But if you're going to send him to another place where he's likely to be tortured, is it really any different? And also they are sending people to Myanmar. They have deported people to Myanmar in the last few months, as you, James, have reported. Yeah, that's right. They've sent more than a dozen people to Myanmar and seem to be continuing. At least they have not said they will stop. And most of those people were directly detained by military intelligence in Myanmar when they landed. So those people would have been tortured. And yet this other person who had a withholding of removal doesn't mean that he will not be tortured. I mean, if we look at like migrants making the journey to the United States are routinely kidnapped, tortured, ransomed, killed, sexually assaulted.

I've heard of all of these firsthand. I don't suspect it will be any different. You know, once they're outside the US again, they're extremely vulnerable. And we saw this a lot in Title 42, when the Trump administration and the Biden administration would just boot people back over the border, often they would do lateral transfers. So you enter into San Diego sector, they drop you in the Laredo sector

or somewhere further East. And those people then have zero network, right? And often don't speak Spanish and are extremely vulnerable. It's pretty much the worst case outcome. Well, unfortunately in the next part, I'm about to tell you about how all of that is about to increase exponentially. Talking of things that are increasing, they're not actually increasing. We still just have to do two advertisements every show.

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iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The summer of 1993 was one of the best of my life. I'm journalist Jeff Perlman and this is Rick Jervis. We were interns at the Nashville Tennessean, but the most unforgettable part, our roommate, Reggie Payne, from Oakley, sports editor and aspiring rapper. And his stage name, Sexy Sweat. In 2020, I had a simple idea. Let's find Reggie. We searched everywhere, but Reggie was gone.

In February, 2020, Reggie was having a diabetic episode. His mom called 911. Police cuffed him face down. He slipped into a coma and died. I'm like thanking you, but then I see my son's not moving. No headlines, no outrage, just silence. So we started digging and uncovered city officials bent on protecting their own. Listen to Finding Sexy Sweat on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. All right, we are back. I hope you enjoyed those adverts. Here we had some new ones for like a religiously sanctioned gold, which I'm very excited about. This is one thing Jesus loved. It was money changes. There's a lot of stuff in the Bible about that. I think silver especially, right?

Yeah, big precious metals guy. Love to see currency speculation. Okay, let's talk about Djibouti, a place where the United States has a big base that it is using for housing people and it's renditioning to other countries. Yeah. So when we first recorded this, we were just doing a Djibouti update about the men who were renditioned to South Sudan. And we knew at the time that there was another Journey Aviation jet about to take off. And now we know what happened with that flight. It landed again in Djibouti. And two days later, DHS announced that it had renditioned five more people

to the country of Eswatini, which I've been to. I reported there in 2011. I spoke to teachers who were starving because they hadn't been paid for eight months by the king, who is the last absolute monarch in Africa. And the teachers that I spoke to were terrified to disappear into the prisons that these five men have now been renditioned to.

I worked with another independent journalist named Alex Plank, and we published a story using OSINT to prove that Journey Flight to Djibouti was carrying the five men. And from there, they were transported by a C-17 US military huge aircraft that flew with its transponders off from Djibouti to Eswatini to deliver these men.

It seems like that is the emerging standard for these military deportation flights, right? At least for the final leg. Yeah. So the last week has been pretty crazy. Yeah. Omni 767 did a removal flight to a couple of places in Africa and at least two and perhaps three large military jets also did removal flights from the United States, landing in Gitmo just for fun, and landing in different countries in Africa. Now, the interesting thing about that and about Journey

is that until this past week, Africa and Central Asia have really been the purview of this other ice air operator that's really gone under the radar. But I think it's possible might be doing some things that are even more sinister than your usual ice air flight. It's a high bar. So this company is called Aircraft Transport Service. They are Florida based, but they are now, all of their aircraft are based in Mesa, Arizona, which is an ice hub. And they're at the end of their five-year contract doing these special high-risk removals to dangerous areas or with, you know, allegedly dangerous migrant passengers. Their flights really began to spike in mid-February

up until July 4th. They have five private jets that they lease from their owners to operate these flights. And I've looked at all of their flights and it's not clear if they are doing any flights that aren't ICE, but certainly at least most of their business is ICE. And so I've tracked 19 different trips, different ICE removal trips that they've done since February 18th. And most of these have gone to countries in Africa.

And that really began to surge around April 29th. And what I've noticed is that on June 26th, New York Times published a story about the Trump administration is pressuring all of these countries to accept more of these third country removals. And there's a lot of overlap between that list of countries and the countries that ATS has been landing in for the last four months. There is a pair of flights in particular

that I find pretty alarming. They went out within 30 minutes of each other on May 20th, which was the same day that the flight to Djibouti went, the flight that was supposed to go to South Sudan. And these flights, so these flights started doing their usual ice removal route, which is, you know, Mesa, maybe we stop in Fort Worth to pick up more migrants. Then you do a fuel stop in San Juan, you do another fuel stop in Senegal, and then you go wherever you're going to go in West Africa.

These flights, 30 minutes apart from each other, flew directly from San Juan to Mauritania. And we're on the ground for 30 minutes, and then from there flew to Senegal. You know, I can't prove anything because ICE does not communicate about its air operations at all, you know, unless they feel like it because they want to brag about it or because, you know, they're ordered to bite courts. These flights to me seem particularly alarming as possible flights where there could have been third country removals that we don't even know about. And Marisa Kavis, she's an independent reporter who has a site called the Hand Basket. At the end of April she reported that there was a third country removal that hasn't gotten

a lot of attention and I don't know, because it's really messed up. A third country removal of an Iraqi man to Rwanda, which happened on April 4th. After he legally migrated to the US, he was accused of murder in Iraq. There's incontrovertible evidence proving that he did not commit this crime. He wasn't even in Iraq when it happened. But the Biden administration continued with his removal. And because he couldn't go back to Iraq because he would have been executed, they had been looking for a safe third country for him. They did not finish that when they handed the keys over

to the Trump administration. So on April 4, he was removed to Rwanda. And he has a lot of media contacts. And no one has heard from him. I have not seen a report about him. I tried to contact his family, it was unsuccessful. I contacted his attorney and didn't hear back. So ATS operated a flight. It began at about 1130 on April 2nd

to this Fort Worth airport that's right next to an ICE detention center, San Juan, Senegal, and then landed in Nairobi. Now, Nairobi is not Kigali in Rwanda, but they're only about an hour apart. And if you look at the flight data, the aircraft at that point had been operating for about 23 hours straight, which is stretching the boundaries of legality, even if you have two crews. So there's a lot of reasons why ICE might have taken him to Nairobi and then done something else for the last leg, I think the most likely explanation is that the crew had to rest and Ice decided that they didn't want to wait. So they may have chartered a local puddle jumper to take them, you know, over the

lake to Kigali. It's pretty common, I think, when I flew into Kigali. I think I've stopped in Kinshasa and Nairobi. I don't know if it's the big planes can't land there, or it's just the way it works. Fewer people are flying to Kigali directly from the US or Europe than are going to places like Kinshasa and Nairobi, so it might just be that they don't do direct flights. But yeah, I don't think I've ever done a direct like big plane flight. Right. It seems that the only aircraft going in and out of there are going to Nairobi and Kampala. And from there you connect somewhere else. It's a pretty small airport. So yeah, that's ATS. They've kind of flown under the radar because Global X is doing so much more in terms of

numbers. But I think it's quite possible that ATS' mission for the past few months has been to sort of pilot program small amounts of third country removals to these different countries, just like of third country removals to these different countries, just like Omar Amin. Because after Omar Amin was sent to Rwanda, the State Department sent a cable that Marissa Cabas obtained saying, oh man, it totally worked. This is great. Let's send 10 more people. At a cost of $100,000 per head, right? Right. Again, maybe suggest incarceration. A hundred grand is going to cover more than your paperwork. Right.

And just to be clear about the cost, all of these military flights that have been flying around Africa now doing ISIS dirty work, those cost about $28,500 an hour to operate. And of course, cost is the least important thing here. But my God, you know, for an administration that claims to care about government waste. Yeah, this is ridiculous. We don't know how much they're paying people in South Sudan or the monarchy of Eswatini. We don't know what they're sort of bribing these people to accept. I just checked with Mauritania. It's currently a level three state department travel warning, telling people to reconsider travel due to terrorism and crime. That's why we're sending people. I have explained

the many and varied human rights abuses that have happened in Mauritania on the show before. So you can go back and listen to other episodes. You want to want to hear about those hundreds of Mauritanians, if not thousands, entered the United States. In the tail end of the Biden administration, I'm thinking like, it was late summer of 2023 when I recall seeing many of them just in my work down at the border. We often get very hot, like September's, October's in Southern California. And a few times I've come across Mauritanian people who were in really bad shape just during those sort of hot months. And so it's always stuck with me that

like some of the stories they had were horrific from the country. And I'm sure that it's some of those people who are now being sent back. And just the fact that they tried to leave will have made things even worse for them. So yeah, that's pretty big. Yeah. I mean, these flights going to Mauritania, which includes one of the military flights last week, you know, slavery still exists in Mauritania. There's a minimum of 90,000 people there who are still enslaved.

That's the low end of the estimates. And you know, it's been illegal since 1981, but the practice is really protected by a culture of secrecy, not just among Mauritanian elites, but the multinational corporations who are embedded there and will just kind of look the other way while they're, you know, extract natural resources with people in the mines that like they're not really going to check if they're enslaved or not. So, you know, maybe we're doing third country deportations and removals there. Maybe we're just sending Mauritanians back to a really horrible place. Yeah. And it doesn't matter, right? We're sending people back to a place where they

are very likely to be tortured, to be, as you say, forced to unfree labor, to be incarcerated without having committed a crime. Doesn't really matter where those people are born, it's fucked. The embassy doesn't let those people drive around Mauritania at night, have to be in the capital. They can only walk in certain places. Give an idea of how this double standard is applied. Talking of multinational corporations, I would love to hear from someone. Let's do that now.

Open AI is a financial abomination, a thing that should not be, an aberration, a symbol of rot at the heart of Silicon Valley. And I'm gonna tell you why on my show, Better Offline, the rudest show in the tech industry. Where we're breaking down why open AI along with other AI companies are dead set on lying to your boss that they can take your job. I'm also going to be talking with the greatest minds in the industry about all the other ways the rich and powerful are ruining the computer. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you happen to get your podcasts.

A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues and evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen, I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors. And you'll meet the

team behind the scenes at Authram, the Houston lab that takes on the most hopeless cases, to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The summer of 1993 was one of the best of my life. I'm journalist Jeff Perlman, and this is Rick Jervis. We were interns at the Nashville Tennessean, but the most unforgettable part? Our roommate, Reggie Payne, from Oakley, sports editor and aspiring rapper.

And his stage name? Sexy Sweat. In 2020, I editor and aspiring rapper. And his stage name? Sexy Sweat. In 2020, I had a simple idea. Let's find Reggie. We searched everywhere, but Reggie was gone. In February 2020, Reggie was having a diabetic episode. His mom called 911. Police cuffed him face down.

He slipped into a coma and died. I'm like thanking you, but then I see my son's not moving. No headlines, no outrage, just silence. So we started digging and uncovered city officials bent on protecting their own. Listen to Finding Sexy Sweat on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes it's hard to remember, but... Going through something like that is a traumatic experience, but it's also not the end of

your life. That was my dad reminding me and so many others who need to hear it that our trauma is not our shame to carry and that we have big bold and beautiful lives to live after what happened to us. I'm your host and co-president of this organization, Dr. Lea TraTate. On my new podcast, The Unwanted Sorority, we wade through transformation to peel back healing and reveal what it actually looks like and sounds like in real time. Each week I sit down with people who live through harm, carried silence, and are now

reshaping the systems that failed us. We're going to talk about the adultification of Black girls, mothering as resistance, and the tools we use for healing. The Unwanted Sorority is a safe space, not a quiet space. So let's walk in. We're moving towards liberation together. Listen to The Unwanted Sorority, new episodes every Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Alright, we are back and we were talking about the safety of private jets. Some of these flights have some pretty horrific safety practices, right? And this like, when you mentioned this, it instantly reminded me of a thing that I have had no luck trying to sell stories on for four years. It is standard practice for ICE and CVP to transport children in their custody without proper child seats or other restraints, right? Which is, you is, to my knowledge, you can get a ticket for that in some states, right? Like if you're driving a child,

like you put a little two-year-old in the seat without a child seat that they have to have, rightfully you're endangering that person's life, but apparently our government's doing it every day. Yeah, I mean, the law doesn't apply to the upholders of the law, right? Right, yeah. Many such cases.

Many such cases, which I'm about to explain more. Let's learn some more. So these ICE flights, you know, most of these are happening on larger jets, A320s, Boeing 737s. Inside the cabin, ProPublica has done some really good reporting on this from April. There's another outlet called Capital in Maine that also did a terrific story in 2021. And the University of Washington also has a lot of research

and information on what it's like inside the cabin of these planes. And, you know, as a former flight attendant, I find it fucking disgusting and really unsafe. Flight attendants on these flights are not allowed to look at or speak to migrant passengers. They aren't allowed to serve them food or water. All of the migrants on these flights are shackled,

wrist to ankles, and some of them, if they're loud or distressed or just annoying the ice guards, are wrapped in restraint blankets and harnesses and have hoods put over their faces. Just this morning, JJ in DC, one of the ice air trackers on Blue Sky, posted a video of a migrant passenger in a hood being loaded onto an Avello jet in Seattle. And he's being pushed by three ice guards and falls to the ground face first and then they just sort of manhandle him back up the stairs. Yeah. So you know as a former flight attendant I just want to

say in the event of an emergency how the fuck is a flight attendant supposed to evacuate the passengers in 90 seconds, when their seat belts are getting tangled in their handcuffs and all they can do is shuffle down the aisle. When they can't see because they have a hood over their head. If the cabin loses pressure, how can they reach up for their oxygen masks? When their handcuffs are attached

by a chain to their leg irons. How are they going to get the mask on themselves if they're wearing a hood? How are they going to get their life vests on when they can't reach back to wrap the strap around their waists? And these emergencies are not theoretical. We know from court filings that between 2014 and 2021,

there were six emergency evacuations of ICE air flights. Of those incidents, the evacuation times of only two are known, and they took two and a half minutes and seven minutes. And to be clear, we only know about those evacuations because of lawsuits. So there may very well have been more evacuations since 2021, and we just don't know about it.

Yeah, I mean, it's likely, right? Like the Biden administration did a, been more evacuations since 2021, and we just don't know about it. Yeah. I mean, it's likely, right? The Biden administration did a mass, especially when they were deporting Haitian people, like huge numbers of flights. Right. And until May and June, September 21, when Biden did the Haitian mass deportation,

that was the highest amount of deportations that Witness at the Border has recorded. Yeah, that was also the last time I was able to write about Biden's administration policy for NBC. Oh, cool. I think I crossed a line saying something mean about Uncle Joe. Yeah. Yeah, but we should be very clear.

This has been a bipartisan thing. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Oh yes. So on each of these flights, there is generally one or two ICE officials and at least 15 ICE contracted guards. Migrant passengers have reported being verbally, physically and sexually abused by these guards and flight attendants on board have no power to stop them. In 2017, 92 migrant passengers traveling from the U.S. to Ethiopia were left shackled on a plane in Dakar, Senegal, for 23 hours because the crew timed out. They were kicked, dragged, tied up, threatened by

ice guards, and when the labs filled up, they soiled themselves. Flight attendants report that the guards on these flights regularly ignore their safety commands and will even try and narc on them. They'll complain to the flight attendant supervisors at their airlines when they're asking people to follow federal aviation regulations, just like everyone else in America has to do. But when flight attendants have complained to the FAA about this, the FAA defers to ICE. You know, this is not just a matter of like, it's disrespectful to a flight attendants. You know, this is extremely dangerous. And one of the most important parts of aviation safety

is something called crew resource management, or CRM. This is something that all pilots and flight attendants are trained in every year and have to retrain every year. And basically, CRM boils down to pilots need to listen to the flight attendants about safety. And flight attendants are trained to be assertive with the pilots about safety. This was developed after a notorious incident in the 1970s

where a plane was on the ground, it was filling up with smoke and the pilot ignored flight attendants please to evacuate, you know, just for some like garden variety sexism probably. And everyone on board died of smoke inhalation, 280 people. So after that, crews are trained every year to really flatten the hierarchies. You know, I think people think like, oh, the captain has four epaulettes and the first officer has three and, you know, oh, hierarchy. No, air crews are actually very,

Oh, hierarchy. No. Air crews are actually very, like the hierarchies are flattened intentionally on purpose. They train to flatten it across job titles, across gender, education, racial, cultural divides, because it is safer to fly that way. When everyone feels that, you know, they have a stake in safety and they'll be heard if they say something about safety, everyone else is safer. Yeah. So if you've got these ICE guards stepping into the middle of that, throwing their weight around, overruling flight attendants and pilots, and the FAA isn't backing them up, you have confusion about who's in power on board. You

have a total breakdown of CRM. And so beyond just like people physically being able to get off of the planes, this is so unsafe to have this kind of environment with these guards. So the last incident I want to talk about was in June 17. To me, this is the scariest one of all of the safety incidents. There was an ice air emergency. This flight landed. It was filling up with smoke. This is almost just like the plane in the 70s. The flight attendants told the pilots to evacuate,

and the pilots ignored them. A bunch of people on board were hospitalized. We don't know how many or who, but frankly, everyone on board could have died from smoke inhalation very easily. And I really think you can point to the presence of the ice guards here as a big factor in the failure to evacuate. That is not how pilots are trained. So again, yeah, if you're a flight attendant or

pilot and you do not want your airline to contract with ICE, now is the time to tell them, tell your union, help flight attendants for Global X and Avelo get jobs somewhere else. Do whatever you can to slow this down because it is all about to increase if they get their way. Yeah. Geez. That is fucking bleak. Yeah. Yeah. You said it's going to get bigger. Like, let's talk about that. Like, can you kind of zoom out and explain ICE-AIR to us? And like, we've talked about these small flights a lot, but like, that's not the bulk of the flights that they do, right? Right. So ICE Air right now has 12 large jets, A320, 737s chartered from different airlines that they're using for their deportations.

And then these private jets are used less for these smaller high-risk deportations. They're running 30, 35 flights a day at this point. So May 20th turned out to be like kind of a big day for ICE Air because that was the Djibouti flight. That was when ATS started using the Tyson call sign. It's also the day that the larger operation really just surged in activity. And you know, the other flight trackers tell me that ICE Air used to take weekends and holidays off and they don't do that anymore. They were deporting people on Juneteenth and July 4th.

In May, ICE operated a record number of flights, which was at least 1,083 flights that flight trackers recorded, 190 of which were removal flights and then the rest are like these internal shuffle flights between different ice detention centers and Return trips and then in June they set a record again with 1187 flights of which 209 were removal flights all of this data is that witness at the border.org and it's kept by Tom Cartwright, who is a real hero. He has been tracking flights basically by himself for five and a half years. And he publishes very detailed monthly reports. And yeah, as you said earlier, you know, he's been tracking this through the Biden administration too, which is how we know that

the Trump deportation machine from the first term, Biden didn't really slow it down that much. Now Trump is picking up the reins again and surging it again. So the airlines right now that are flying these larger removal flights are Global X, also called Global Crossing Airlines, Avelo Airlines, Eastern Air, and On The International. And except for ATS, who I talked about earlier, has their own contract, all of these carriers who fly for ICE are subcontracted through a flight broker called CSI Aviation.

CSI Aviation signed a five-year contract with the Biden administration last year. That has been paused because of a lawsuit from a rival flight broker that wanted that contract. So since late February, CSI has been brokering these flights on a six-month no-bid contract that started at $128 million and was quickly doubled and then went up to $274 million. And then just a couple of days ago, I don't think anyone else has reported this, it was

raised again to $339 million. So they've got about $60 million left on this contract for the next six weeks. And that's before the huge windfall in funding that ICE just got from Trump's big, beautiful bill. The administration has said it wants to triple deportations. And right now they just don't have the aircraft for that. And DHS on Twitter and Instagram, a couple of days ago, they posted this really ghoulish meme that said, fire up the deportation planes. And there was like a skeleton lifting weights with a caption that said,

my body is a machine that turns ICE funding into mass deportations. So that's gross. Yeah, that was really weird. They've been doing a lot of this like poster stuff. Right. Like I said, they only have 12 jets right now and they're flying those at capacity.

So they can't triple deportations unless they start bringing in more airlines. So the other day I posted a call to action to flight attendants and to flight attendant unions saying, you know, if you don't want your airline to do these flights, now is the time to tell them. CSI Aviation is run by a man named Alan Way and his daughter, Deborah Mastis. Alan Way is the former chair of the New Mexico Republican Party.

He's hosted a bunch of Trump rallies over the years. He ran unsuccessfully for Senate and governor of New Mexico in the past on an anti-immigrant platform, which local media at the time pointed out, well, you're mostly doing deportation flights, so that would really be enriching yourself. His daughter, Deborah Macy's, was one of the fake electors in New Mexico during the 2020 election.

Wow. Very deep. Yeah. She was subpoenaed by the House committee investigating the January 6th insurrection. And the New Mexico State Attorney General's office investigated her. Eventually they did not press charges because she and the other fake electors claimed they didn't know their fake certifications were going to be used for anything illegal. And the project on government oversight has some pretty good reporting on CSI aviation, if you want to see that. Yeah. Yeah, we'll put it in the show notes. Yeah, insane. This whole thing is just complete. I would watch or look at some of the footage from inside deportation flights because it

is inhumane. Yeah. I mean, I hope that any flight attendants who are forced to work these flights can find a way to quit. But if they can't quit for financial reasons, because all of these people are, you know, very underpaid. You know, I hope that they can provide us with more information about what is going on inside these flights. Yeah, definitely. That would be, at least give people a chance to see what their

tax dollars are being spent on. Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I've been thinking about, you know, terrorism is like a really loaded word that gets misused a lot against black and brown people. But I think that's the right word for all of these removals because they're random, they're violent, they're targeting civilians for a political purpose and they're designed to frighten the larger population of potential victims. The Trump administration is trying to scare all undocumented immigrants and anyone adjacent to them since a lot of citizens are being arrested too. Or green card holders, people with buckets of documents are being deported and renditioned

right now. Right. And they're saying, you know, they're trying to make them so scared that if they don't self-deport, they could end up in South Sudan. They could end up in Mauritania. You know, that's what this policy is designed to do, is to terrorize the people of this country. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, it's pretty bleak. We have an encrypted email address. So if you are, I guess, a deportation flight attendant and you would like to talk to someone, I can pass it on to Gideon too. You might have your own encrypted email address and you can plug it if you do. Yeah, you can definitely leak to me on Signal.

Okay, yeah, it's nice. We have coolzontipsatprotonmail.com or coolzontipsatproton.me. I believe they both work. It's only encrypted if the address that it's sent from is also encrypted. So in this instance, you would need a proton mail or you can click up your own encryption. Yeah, that would be the way to get in touch if you want to get in touch. This, this fucking sucks. Like, and there's going to be so much more of it in the next couple of years with this budget. Like this is going to become, well, it already is an everyday thing. This is going to become even more common. I know they're also like, they're doing some weird shuffle to avoid sanctions with Venezuelan airlines, right? Yeah, they fly, I believe it is to Honduras and then Venezuela flies their own plane to Honduras to pick them up.

Right, yeah. Cool. I'm sure those people have a great time when they go back to Venezuela. I know Venezuela is also offering humanitarian flights for its citizens who are stuck in Mexico right now. So, like, if people want to do something about this, what can they do? The first thing you can do is boycott Avelo Airlines. They are commercial airlines, so don't fly with them. You can write to the airlines you use regularly right now and tell them that if they are considering contracting with ICE not to, that you will boycott them too. You can complain to the FAA about the safety issues

on these flights. I doubt that they'll do anything, but I think there's value in saying something anyway. If you have contacts in aviation or in any of the countries that these people are being sent to and you find something out, you can link to me on Signal. And if you work in aviation, tell your airline and your union right now

that you are not gonna operate these flights. And if you wanna get started tracking flights yourself, we need a lot of help, especially in the overnight hours. A good first step is to go to globe.adsbexchange.com and in the general search window type Tyson. You've been doing really, really great reporting on this and I'm sure people want to continue to follow it. It is a shame that other outlets are not running it, but God bless them.

Yeah. Just trying their best out there. If you want to know what James is talking about, there's a brief explanation at the end of one of my stories that I've written recently at harjithistory.ghost.io. I have a couple stories there about the recent flights to Africa and you can read the bottom and you'll find out what James is talking about. Yep. It's a little teaser for you. Right.

Go get the tea. Yeah. Okay. Thank you for joining us. I'm sure we'll hear from you again soon. Thank you, James. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com.

And don't forget to subscribe to our channel. We'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonedmedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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