Speaker 1: Also media, Hi everyone, and welcome to it could happen here.
Speaker 1: We are joined once again by Gillian Brockel, who is
Speaker 1: once again going to talk to us about the terrible
Speaker 1: actually world of deportation flights, how we can track them,
Speaker 1: what we can learn from following them, and what it
Speaker 1: tells us about the US's massive deportation regimes.
Speaker 2: Welcome back, Thanks for joining.
Speaker 3: Us, Thank you for having me, James, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: You're welcome.
Speaker 4: All right, let's get going here this week, got a
Speaker 4: lot to go and there's been a lot of planes supporting.
Speaker 3: People deporting and removing.
Speaker 5: So we've really stopped saying deporting because we don't know
Speaker 5: who hasn't gotten due process and who does and does
Speaker 5: not actually belong to the country they're being sent to.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in many cases, it's more like what we saw
Speaker 4: in the Extraordinary Rendition, very much so kind of war
Speaker 4: and terry. I think that's pretty a better way.
Speaker 2: To describe it. Yeah, let's start out. Suppose was Djibouti.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so the eight men that were sent to Djibouti,
Speaker 5: that's the flight I first tracked on May twentieth. They
Speaker 5: were taken on a gulf Stream five operated by journey
Speaker 5: aviation from Harling in Texas to Shannon Airport in Ireland,
Speaker 5: and I called the cops in Ireland to try and stop.
Speaker 5: It didn't work, and then they went to a US
Speaker 5: military base in Djibouti, where judge had ordered them to
Speaker 5: remain while he considered their case. So those men are
Speaker 5: now in South Sudan, where Trump wanted to send them.
Speaker 5: They were held in Jibouti for six weeks. We know
Speaker 5: from court filings that they were held inside a shipping
Speaker 5: container in a far corner of the base, near a
Speaker 5: burn pit where the trash for the base was burned,
Speaker 5: and that smoke from this pit was getting into the
Speaker 5: shipping container through the events and causing the men and
Speaker 5: the ice Gars to cough and feel ill. There was
Speaker 5: also an independent journalist named Alex Planck who got a
Speaker 5: photo from a source on the base showing one of
Speaker 5: the detainees shackled at the ankles and being escorted by
Speaker 5: an ice guard to the restroom because the shipping container
Speaker 5: did not have its own restroom. And he said that
Speaker 5: most of the members of the military at the base
Speaker 5: didn't even know that they were there. And you know
Speaker 5: this base is generally considered like one of the worst
Speaker 5: assignments to get when you're in the military. Plank said
Speaker 5: he talked to a defense contractor who said that they
Speaker 5: stopped sending their employees to that base.
Speaker 3: Because it was just too terrible.
Speaker 5: So during the six week period, I and other flight
Speaker 5: trackers we tracked five trips by round trip trips by
Speaker 5: Journey Aviation jets to and from their base in Miami
Speaker 5: and Djibouti, all traveling through Shannon. Presumably these were flights
Speaker 5: that were swapping out ICE guards, but we really don't
Speaker 5: know because ICE does not provide any information about its
Speaker 5: air operations. Everything we know is through court filings and
Speaker 5: through open source intelligence like the ADSP Exchange. Then on
Speaker 5: July third, the Supreme Court cleared the way for these
Speaker 5: third country removals, and this one specifically to South Sudan.
Speaker 5: All of US flight trekkers were watching the airspace really closely,
Speaker 5: and we knew that one of Journey's jets was already
Speaker 5: there on the ground in Jibooty, so that's what we
Speaker 5: were looking for. But then on the evening of July fifth,
Speaker 5: about two days later, DHS announced that it was done.
Speaker 5: They had removed the detainees to Sausudan via a military
Speaker 5: flight earlier that day. And I have gone over the
Speaker 5: air traffic data for that region six times on adsp Exchange,
Speaker 5: and I haven't been able to spot this military flight.
Speaker 5: And granted, Djibouti is a real ADSB dead zone, but
Speaker 5: Juba isn't. Juba actually has quite good coverage, and you know,
Speaker 5: Addis Ababa also has very good coverage which they would
Speaker 5: have had to fly over. So it's clear to me
Speaker 5: that this military flight, if it happened as DHS claims,
Speaker 5: probably flew the entire trip with its transponder turned off,
Speaker 5: which is something that the military can do, but it's
Speaker 5: not standard.
Speaker 3: I think people would be.
Speaker 5: Surprised how rare actually it is for military flights to
Speaker 5: do that, unless they're going on a combat or spy mission.
Speaker 5: Most military aircraft fly with their transponders on. So if
Speaker 5: you think about the Iran air strikes a couple of
Speaker 5: weeks ago, the week before the air strikes, there were
Speaker 5: thirty two Globe Masters and Strata tankers that flew from
Speaker 5: the US to bases in Europe in a single night. That,
Speaker 5: like every av geek was like whoa you know, and
Speaker 5: we knew that that happened because they flew with their
Speaker 5: transponders on, even though it made it really obvious that
Speaker 5: some kind of military operation was probably imminent.
Speaker 3: And then even during the.
Speaker 5: Air strikes, these aircraft would take off from Europe with
Speaker 5: their transponders on, turn them off over the Mediterranean when
Speaker 5: they were heading east, do whatever.
Speaker 3: They were doing, and then turn them back on when
Speaker 3: they were headed back toward Europe.
Speaker 5: So even part of the combat mission, they still have
Speaker 5: their transponders on. Yeah, So the fact that the flight
Speaker 5: to Sasudan, which was not a combat or a spy mission,
Speaker 5: appears to have flown the entire trip with its transponder
Speaker 5: off is quite notable to me. And you know, I
Speaker 5: see it as an extension of ISIS tactics on the
Speaker 5: ground where they are covering their faces and refusing to
Speaker 5: identify themselves. But I'm, you know, kind of surprised that
Speaker 5: they got the military to go along with that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if it was really a military flight, right, like
Speaker 4: it could be something kind of military adjacent like some
Speaker 4: DHS or other government aircraft.
Speaker 3: Right, I mean, we don't know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they said it happened by a military flight on
Speaker 5: this date, but we don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So on July.
Speaker 5: Eighth, the spokesperson for the South Sudanese government told the
Speaker 5: AP that the men were there and that they were
Speaker 5: quote under the care of the relevant authorities who are
Speaker 5: screening them and ensuring their safety and well being. We
Speaker 5: have no idea what that means. Does that mean they're
Speaker 5: in prison there? Does that mean that they are, you know,
Speaker 5: going to be sent to their countries of origin as
Speaker 5: they claimed at one point? We have no idea, yeah,
Speaker 5: And then just a few minutes ago we're recording this.
Speaker 5: On Beciel day, July fourteenth, the same plane that first
Speaker 5: took these men to Djibouti was scheduled to take off
Speaker 5: from El Paso for Shannon Airport in Ireland. Once again,
Speaker 5: where it goes after that, Well, you might know by
Speaker 5: the time you hear this, but right now it's anyone's guess.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's baffling, like some of this stuff, like the
Speaker 4: deportations to or no deportations, like rendition to South Sudan.
Speaker 4: Right Like even Homan, who's the Trump's quote unquote borders
Speaker 4: are or immigrations are, seems to be asserting that he
Speaker 4: has no idea what happened to them once they've landed there,
Speaker 4: Like right, at one point they suggested that they didn't
Speaker 4: think they would be detained, but like do they just
Speaker 4: let them out into the street in I mean, when
Speaker 4: people are released from custody in the United States, that's
Speaker 4: exactly what they do, right, they let them out into
Speaker 4: the street. Like, Yeah, a lot of volunteers here in
Speaker 4: San Diego have spent a lot of time, you know,
Speaker 4: because often people are released without Sometimes they're released without
Speaker 4: religious garments, which are very important to them. Often they're
Speaker 4: released without any sort of orientation. Where are they How
Speaker 4: do they get where they're going? Can they afford a flight?
Speaker 4: You know, how do they book a flight? Do they
Speaker 4: have the relevant documents to book a flight? It's a
Speaker 4: complete clusterfug And that's it in the US.
Speaker 3: Right, And I mean think about it.
Speaker 5: If you're like Laoshian or Vietnamese man in your fifties
Speaker 5: or sixties, which a lot of these men are older gentlemen,
Speaker 5: and you're what just like led out into the streets
Speaker 5: of Juba, which is, you know, a big city.
Speaker 3: But there's a lot of instability in this country. Like
Speaker 3: what are you gonna do? It's a big thinker like
Speaker 3: what you know, Yeah, you're very vulnerable, very vulnerable, and you.
Speaker 4: Probably don't have any material resources. It's not that you
Speaker 4: can get your credit card, take out much of money
Speaker 4: and fly somewhere else. Nor do these people really have
Speaker 4: in many cases anywhere to go, right, Like, the reason
Speaker 4: that they're being taken to third countries is generally that
Speaker 4: they have withholding of removal or convention against torture claims
Speaker 4: that they can't.
Speaker 2: Be removed to their home countries.
Speaker 4: Since we recorded this, we have found out that people
Speaker 4: in South Sudan are being detained. According to an outlet
Speaker 4: called The Daily with your South Sudanese outlet, those people
Speaker 4: are incarcerated in South Suda.
Speaker 3: Like the man for Me and Mar.
Speaker 5: You know, they're arguing that, you know, I suppose, oh,
Speaker 5: we can't send him to me and Mar, But if
Speaker 5: you're going to send him to another place where he's
Speaker 5: likely to be tortured, is it really any different? And
Speaker 5: also they are sending people to me and Mar. They
Speaker 5: have reported people to Me and Marr in the last
Speaker 5: few months, as you James have reported.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4: They've sent more than a dozen people to Memr and
Speaker 4: seem to be continuing, at least they have not said
Speaker 4: they will stop. And most of those people were directly
Speaker 4: detained by military intelligence and MEMMA when they landed, So
Speaker 4: those people will have been tortured. And yeah, this this
Speaker 4: other person who had withholding it from removal doesn't.
Speaker 2: Mean that he will not be tortured.
Speaker 4: I mean, if we look at like migrants making the
Speaker 4: journey to the United States are routinely kidnapped, tortured, ransom killed,
Speaker 4: sexually assaulted. I've heard of all of these firsthand. I
Speaker 4: don't suspect it will be any different. You know, once
Speaker 4: they're outside the US again, extremely vulnerable. And we saw
Speaker 4: this a lot in title forty two, when the Trump
Speaker 4: administration and the Biden administration would just boot people back
Speaker 4: over the border. Often they would do lateral transfers, so
Speaker 4: you enter in the San Diego sector, they drop you
Speaker 4: in the Laredo sector or somewhere further east. And those
Speaker 4: people that have zero network right and often don't speak
Speaker 4: Spanish and are extremely vulnerable. It's pretty much the worst
Speaker 4: case outcome here.
Speaker 5: Well, unfortunately, in the next part, I'm about to tell
Speaker 5: you about how all of that is about to increase exponentially.
Speaker 4: Yeah, talking of things that are increasing, actually increasing. We
Speaker 4: still just have to do two advertisements every show, so
Speaker 4: we'll get me one of them now, all right, we
Speaker 4: are back.
Speaker 2: I hope you enjoyed those adverts here.
Speaker 4: We had some new ones for like a religiously sansient gold,
Speaker 4: which I'm very exciting about. This is one thing Jesus loved.
Speaker 4: It was money change. There's a lot of stuff in
Speaker 4: the Bible about that.
Speaker 3: I think silvers actually, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think big precious metals. Guy, love to see
Speaker 4: currency speculation. Okay, let's talk about Djibouti, a place where
Speaker 4: the United States has a big base that it is
Speaker 4: using for housing people that it's renditioning to other countries.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So when we first recorded this, we were just doing
Speaker 5: a Djibouti update about the men who were renditioned to
Speaker 5: South Sudan, and we knew at the time that there
Speaker 5: was another Journey Aviation jet about to take off. And
Speaker 5: now we know what happened with that flight. It landed
Speaker 5: again in Djibouti, and two days later DHS announced that
Speaker 5: it had renditioned five more people to the country of Swatini,
Speaker 5: which I've been to. I reported there in twenty eleven,
Speaker 5: I spoke to teachers who were starving because they hadn't
Speaker 5: been paid for eight months by the king, who you
Speaker 5: know is the last absolute monarch in Africa. And you know,
Speaker 5: the teachers that I spoke to were terrified to disappear
Speaker 5: into the prisons that these five men have now been
Speaker 5: renditioned to. I worked with another independent journalist named Alex Plank,
Speaker 5: and we published a story using OSIN to prove that
Speaker 5: that journey flight to Djibouti was carrying the five men
Speaker 5: and from there they were transported by a C seventeen
Speaker 5: US military you know, huge aircraft that flew with its
Speaker 5: transponders off from Djibouti to Swatini to deliver these men.
Speaker 4: Seems like that is the emerging standard for these military
Speaker 4: deportation flights, right at least for the final leg.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the last week has been pretty crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: An Omni seven sixty seven did a removal flight to
Speaker 5: a couple places in Africa, and at least two and
Speaker 5: perhaps three large military jets also did removal flights from
Speaker 5: the United States, landing in Gemo just for fun, and
Speaker 5: landing in different countries in Africa. Now, the interesting thing
Speaker 5: about that and about journey is that until this past week,
Speaker 5: Africa and Central Asia have really been the purview of
Speaker 5: this other ice air operator that's really gone under the radar,
Speaker 5: but I think it's possible might be doing some things
Speaker 5: that are even more sinister than your usual ice air flights.
Speaker 5: So this company is called Aircraft Transport Service. They are
Speaker 5: Florida base, but they are now all of their aircraft
Speaker 5: are based in Mesa, Arizona, which is an ICE hub,
Speaker 5: and they're at the end of their five year contracting
Speaker 5: these special high risk removals to dangerous areas or with
Speaker 5: you know, allegedly dangerous migrant passengers. Their flights really began
Speaker 5: to spike in mid February up until July fourth. They
Speaker 5: have five private jets that they lease from their owners
Speaker 5: to operate these flights. And I've looked at all of
Speaker 5: their flights and it's not clear if they are doing
Speaker 5: any flights that aren't ICE, but certainly at least most
Speaker 5: of their business is ICE. And so I've tracked nineteen
Speaker 5: different trips, different ice removal trips that they've done since
Speaker 5: February eighteenth, and most of these have gone to countries
Speaker 5: in Africa, and that really began to surge around April
Speaker 5: twenty ninth, And what I've noticed is that on June
Speaker 5: twenty six, New York Times published a story about, you know,
Speaker 5: the Trump administration is pressuring all of these countries to
Speaker 5: accept more of these third country removals, and there's a
Speaker 5: lot of overlap between that list of countries and the
Speaker 5: countries that ATS has been landing in for the last
Speaker 5: four months. There is a pair of flights in particular
Speaker 5: that I find pretty alarming. They went out within thirty
Speaker 5: minutes of each other on May twentieth, which was the
Speaker 5: same day that the flight to Djibouti, when the flight
Speaker 5: that was supposed to go to Sausudan and these flights,
Speaker 5: so these flights started doing their usual ice removal route,
Speaker 5: which is, you know, MESA, maybe we stop in Fort
Speaker 5: Worth to pick up more migrants, then you do a
Speaker 5: fuel stop in San Juan, you do another fuel stop
Speaker 5: in Senegal, and then you go wherever you're going to
Speaker 5: go in West Africa. These flights, thirty minutes apart from
Speaker 5: each other, flew directly from San Juan to Mauritanium and
Speaker 5: we're on the ground for thirty minutes, and then from
Speaker 5: there flew to Senegal. You know, I can't prove anything
Speaker 5: because ICE does not communicate about its air operations at all,
Speaker 5: you know, unless they feel like it because they want
Speaker 5: to brag about it, or because you know, they're ordered
Speaker 5: to bite courts. These flights to me seem particularly alarming
Speaker 5: as possible flights where there could have been third country
Speaker 5: removals that we don't even know about. And Marissa Cavas,
Speaker 5: she's an independent reporter who has a site called the
Speaker 5: Handbass Get. At the end of April, she reported that
Speaker 5: there was a third country removal that hasn't gotten a
Speaker 5: lot of attention, and I don't know why, because it's
Speaker 5: really messed up. A third country removal of an Iraqi
Speaker 5: man to Rwanda, which happened on April fourth, after he
Speaker 5: legally migrated to the US. He was accused of murder
Speaker 5: in Iraq. There's incontroversial evidence proving that he did not
Speaker 5: commit this crime. He wasn't even in Iraq when it happened,
Speaker 5: but the Biden administration continued with his removal. And because
Speaker 5: he couldn't go back to Iraq because he would have
Speaker 5: been executed, they had been looking for a safe third
Speaker 5: country for him. They did not finish that when they
Speaker 5: handed the keys over to the Trump administration. So on
Speaker 5: April fourth, he was removed to Rwanda. And he has
Speaker 5: a lot of media contacts and no one has heard
Speaker 5: from him. I have not seen a report him, you know.
Speaker 5: I tried to contact his family, was unsuccessful. I contacted
Speaker 5: his attorney and didn't hear back. So ATS operated a flight.
Speaker 5: It began at about eleven thirty on April second to
Speaker 5: this Fort Worth Airport that's right next to an ICED
Speaker 5: attention center San Juan, Senegal, and then landed in Nairobi.
Speaker 5: Now Nairobi is not Kigali in Rwanda, but they're only
Speaker 5: about an hour apart, and if you look at the
Speaker 5: flight data, the aircraft at that point had been operating
Speaker 5: for about twenty three hours straight, which is stretching the
Speaker 5: boundaries of legality, even if you.
Speaker 3: Have two crews. So there's a lot of.
Speaker 5: Reasons why ICE might have taken him to Nairobi and
Speaker 5: then done something else for the last leg I think
Speaker 5: the most likely explanation is that the crew had to
Speaker 5: rest and I decided that they didn't want to wait,
Speaker 5: So they may have chartered a local puddle jumper to
Speaker 5: take them, you know, over the lake to Kika.
Speaker 4: It's pretty common, I think to when I've flow into Kikali.
Speaker 4: I think I've stopped in Kinshasa and Nairobi. I don't
Speaker 4: know if it's a big planes can't land there. It's
Speaker 4: just the kind of the way it works. Fewer people
Speaker 4: are flying to Kigali directly from the USO Europe than
Speaker 4: are going to places like King Shasta, Nairobi, so it
Speaker 4: might just be that they don't do direct flights. But yeah,
Speaker 4: I don't think I've ever done a direct big plane
Speaker 4: flight right.
Speaker 5: It seems that the only aircraft going in and out
Speaker 5: of there are going to Nairobi and Kampala, and from
Speaker 5: there you connect somewhere else.
Speaker 2: It's a pretty small airport, so.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that's ATS.
Speaker 5: They've kind of flown under the radar because global x
Speaker 5: is doing so much more in terms of numbers. But
Speaker 5: I think it's quite possible that ATS's mission for the
Speaker 5: past few months has been to sort of pilot program
Speaker 5: small amounts of third country removals to these different countries,
Speaker 5: just like omar Amin. Because after omar Amin was sent
Speaker 5: to Rwanda, the State Department sent a cable that Mrsakabas
Speaker 5: obtained saying, oh man, it totally worked. This is great.
Speaker 5: Let's send ten more people.
Speaker 4: At a cost to one hundred thousand per head, right
Speaker 4: right again, maybe suggesting carcerational one hundred grand is going
Speaker 4: to cover more than your paperwork, you know.
Speaker 5: Right, And just to be clear about, you know, the
Speaker 5: cost all of these military flights that have been flying
Speaker 5: around Africa now doing isis dirty work.
Speaker 3: Those cost about.
Speaker 5: Twenty eight five hundred dollars an hour to operate, and
Speaker 5: of course cost is the least important thing here. But
Speaker 5: my god, you know, for an administration that claims to
Speaker 5: care about government.
Speaker 2: Waste, yeah, this is ridiculous.
Speaker 4: We don't know how much they're paying people in South
Speaker 4: Sudan or the monarchy of a Swatini. We don't know
Speaker 4: what they're sort of bribing these people to accept. I
Speaker 4: just checked with Mauritania. It's currently a Level three State
Speaker 4: Department travel warning telling people to reconsider travel due to
Speaker 4: terrorism and crime.
Speaker 2: That's why we're sending people.
Speaker 4: I have explained the many and varied human rights abuses
Speaker 4: that have happened in Mauritania on the show before, so
Speaker 4: you can go back and listen to other episodes. Do
Speaker 4: you want to want to hear about those hundreds of Mauritanians,
Speaker 4: if not thousands, entered the United States in the tail
Speaker 4: end of the Bid administration. I'm thinking like it was
Speaker 4: late summer of twenty twenty three when I recall seeing
Speaker 4: many of them. Just in my workdown at the border,
Speaker 4: we often get very hot, like September's octobers in southern California,
Speaker 4: and a few times I've come across Mauritanian people who
Speaker 4: were in really bad shape just during those sort of
Speaker 4: hot months, and it's sort of stuck with me that,
Speaker 4: like some of the stories they had were horrific treat
Speaker 4: and I'm sure that it's some of those people who
Speaker 4: are now being sent back and just the fact that
Speaker 4: they tried to leave will have made things even worse
Speaker 4: for them.
Speaker 5: So yeah, I mean, these flights going to Mauritania, which
Speaker 5: includes one of the military flights last week, you know,
Speaker 5: slavery still exists in Mauritania. There's a minimum of ninety
Speaker 5: thousand people there who are still enslaved. That's the low
Speaker 5: end of the estimates. And you know, it's been illegal
Speaker 5: since nineteen eighty one, but the practice is really protected
Speaker 5: by a culture of secrecy, not just among Mauritanian elites,
Speaker 5: but the multinational corporations who are embedded there and will
Speaker 5: just kind of look the other way while they're you know,
Speaker 5: extract natural resources with people in the minds that like
Speaker 5: they're not really going to check if they're enslaved or not. So,
Speaker 5: you know, maybe we're doing third country deportations and removals there.
Speaker 5: Maybe we're just sending Mauretanians back to a really horrible place.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it doesn't humanly matter, right, We're sending people
Speaker 4: back to a place where they are very likely to
Speaker 4: be tortured, to be as you say, like faust, to
Speaker 4: unfree labor, to be incarcerated without having committed a crime.
Speaker 4: Doesn't really matter whether people want.
Speaker 2: It's fucked.
Speaker 4: The embassy doesn't let us people drive around Mauritania at night,
Speaker 4: have to be in the capital, They can only walk
Speaker 4: in certain places. Give an idea of like how this
Speaker 4: double standard is applied. Talking of multinational corporations, I would.
Speaker 2: Love to hear from. So let's do that now.
Speaker 4: All right, we are back and we were talking about
Speaker 4: the safety of private jets. Some of these flights have
Speaker 4: some pretty horrific safety practices, right, and this, like when
Speaker 4: you mentioned this, it instantly reminded me of a thing
Speaker 4: that I have had no luck trying to sell stories
Speaker 4: on for four years. It is standard practice for I
Speaker 4: and CVP to transport children, children in their custody without
Speaker 4: proper child seats or other restraints, right, which is you know,
Speaker 4: to my knowledge, you can get a ticket for that
Speaker 4: in some states. Right, Like if you're driving a child,
Speaker 4: like you put a little two year old in the
Speaker 4: seat without a like a child seat that they have
Speaker 4: to have, Like, rightfully, you're endangering that person's life. But
Speaker 4: apparently our government's doing it every day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the law doesn't apply to the upholders
Speaker 3: of the law, right, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, many such cases.
Speaker 3: Many such cases which I'm about to explain more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's learn some more.
Speaker 5: So these ice flights, you know, most of these are
Speaker 5: happening on larger jets A three twenties, owing seven thirty
Speaker 5: sevens inside the cabin. REPUBLICA has done some really good
Speaker 5: reporting on this from April. There's another outlet called Capitol
Speaker 5: and Maine that also did a terrific story in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty one, and the University of Washington also has a
Speaker 5: lot of research and information on what it's like inside
Speaker 5: the cabin of these planes. And you know, as a
Speaker 5: former flight attendant, I find it fucking disgusting and really unsafe.
Speaker 5: Flight attendants on these flights are not allowed to look
Speaker 5: at or speak to migrant passengers. They aren't allowed to
Speaker 5: serve them food or water. All of the migrants on
Speaker 5: these flights are shackled wrist to ankles, and some of them,
Speaker 5: if they're allowed or distressed or just annoying, the ice
Speaker 5: guards are wrapped in restraint blankets and harnesses and have
Speaker 5: hoods put over their faces. Just this morning, JJ and DC,
Speaker 5: one of the ice air trackers on Blue Sky, posted
Speaker 5: a video of a migrant passenger in a hood being
Speaker 5: loaded onto Avello Jet in Seattle and he's being pushed
Speaker 5: by three ice guards and falls to the ground face
Speaker 5: first and then they just sort of man handle him
Speaker 5: back up the stairs.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So, you know, as a former flight attendant, I just
Speaker 5: want to say, in the event of an emergency, how
Speaker 5: the fuck is a flight attendant supposed to evacuate the
Speaker 5: passengers in ninety seconds when their seat belts are getting
Speaker 5: tangled in their handcuffs? And all they can do is
Speaker 5: shuffle down the aisle when they can't see because they
Speaker 5: have a hood over their head. If the cabin loses pressure,
Speaker 5: how can they reach up for their oxygen masks when
Speaker 5: their handcuffs are attached by a chain to their leg irons.
Speaker 5: How are they going to get the mask on themselves
Speaker 5: if they're wearing a hood? How are they going to
Speaker 5: get their life fests on when they can't reach back
Speaker 5: to wrap the strap around their waists? And these emergencies
Speaker 5: are not theoretical. We know from court filings that between
Speaker 5: twenty fourteen and twenty twenty one there were six emergency
Speaker 5: evacuations of Ice air flights. Of those incidents, the evacuation
Speaker 5: times of only two are known, and they took two
Speaker 5: and a half minutes and seven minutes. And to be clear,
Speaker 5: we only know about those evacuations because of lawsuits. So
Speaker 5: there may very well have been more evacuations since twenty
Speaker 5: twenty one and we just don't know about it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's likely right, like the Biden administration
Speaker 4: did it, especially when they were deporting Haitian people, like
Speaker 4: huge numbers of flights.
Speaker 5: Right until May and June September twenty one, when Biden
Speaker 5: did the Haitian mass deportation. That was the highest amount
Speaker 5: of deportations that witness at the border has recorded.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: That was also the last time I was able to
Speaker 4: write about Biden's administration policy NBC. I think I crossed
Speaker 4: the line saying something mean about Uncle Joe.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but we should be very clip. This has been
Speaker 4: a bipartisan thing.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, oh yes.
Speaker 5: So on each of these flights there is generally one
Speaker 5: or two ICE officials and at least fifteen ICE contracted guards.
Speaker 5: Migrant passengers have reported being verbally, physically, and sexually abused
Speaker 5: by these guards, and flight attendants on board have no
Speaker 5: power to stop them. In twenty seventeen, ninety two migrant
Speaker 5: passengers traveling from the US to Ethiopia were left shackled
Speaker 5: on a plane in the car Senegal for twenty three
Speaker 5: hours because the crew timed out. They were kicked, dragged,
Speaker 5: tied up, threatened by ICE guards, and when the labs
Speaker 5: filled up, they soiled themselves. Flight attendants report that the
Speaker 5: guards on these flights regularly ignore their safety commands and
Speaker 5: will even you know, try and narc on them. They'll
Speaker 5: complain to the flight attendant's supervisors at their airlines when
Speaker 5: they're asking people to follow federal aviation regulations, it's like
Speaker 5: everyone else in America has to do. But when flight
Speaker 5: attendants have complained to the FAA about this, the FAA
Speaker 5: defers to ice. You know, this is not just a
Speaker 5: matter of like it's disrespectful, two dangerous flight attendants. You know,
Speaker 5: this is extremely dangerous. And one of the most important
Speaker 5: parts of aviation safety is something called Crew resource management
Speaker 5: or CRM. This is something that all pilots and flight
Speaker 5: attendants are trained in every year and have to retrain
Speaker 5: every year, and basically CRM boils down to pilots need
Speaker 5: to listen to the flight attendants about safety, and flight
Speaker 5: attendants are trained to be assertive with the pilots about safety.
Speaker 5: This was developed after a notorious incident in the nineteen
Speaker 5: seventies where a plane was on the ground, it was
Speaker 5: filling up with smoke, and the pilot ignored flight attendants
Speaker 5: please to evacuate, you know, just for some like garden
Speaker 5: variety sexism probably, and everyone on board died of smoke inhalation,
Speaker 5: two hundred and eighty people. So after that, crews are
Speaker 5: trained every year to really flatten the hierarchies. You know,
Speaker 5: I think people think like, oh, the captain has four
Speaker 5: epaulets and the first officer has three, and you know,
Speaker 5: oh hierarchy. No air crews are actually very like the
Speaker 5: hierarchies are flattened intentionally on purpose. They train to flatten
Speaker 5: it across job titles, across gender, education, racial cultural divides,
Speaker 5: because it is safer to fly that way. When everyone
Speaker 5: feels that, you know, they have a stake in safety
Speaker 5: and they'll be heard if they say something about safety,
Speaker 5: everyone else is safer. So if you've got these ICE
Speaker 5: guards stepping into the middle of that, throwing their weight around,
Speaker 5: overruling flight attendants and pilots, and the FAA isn't backing
Speaker 5: them up, you have confusion about who's in power on board,
Speaker 5: you have a total breakdow on a CRM, and so
Speaker 5: beyond just like people physically being able to get off
Speaker 5: of the planes, this is so unsafe to have this
Speaker 5: kind of environment with these guards. So the last incident
Speaker 5: I want to talk about was in June seventeen. To me,
Speaker 5: this is the scariest one of all of the safety incidents.
Speaker 5: There was an ice Air emergency. This flight landed it
Speaker 5: was filling up with smoke. This is almost just like
Speaker 5: the plane in the seventies the flight attendants told the
Speaker 5: pilots to evacuate, and the pilots ignored them. A bunch
Speaker 5: of people on board were hospitalized. We don't know how
Speaker 5: many or who, but frankly, everyone on board could have
Speaker 5: died from smoke inhalation very easily. And I really think
Speaker 5: you can point to the presence of the ICE guards
Speaker 5: here as a big factor in the failure to evacuate.
Speaker 5: That is not how pilots are trained. So again, yeah,
Speaker 5: if you're a flight attendant for pilot and you do
Speaker 5: not want your airline to contract with ICE, now is
Speaker 5: the time to tell them. Tell your union help flight
Speaker 5: attendants for Global X and the Vello get jobs somewhere else. Ye,
Speaker 5: you know, do whatever you can to slow this down,
Speaker 5: because it is all about to increase if they get
Speaker 5: their way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, jeez, that is fucking bleak. Yeah, yeah, you said
Speaker 4: it's going to get bigger. Like let's talk about that,
Speaker 4: Like can you kind of zoom out and explain Ice
Speaker 4: Air to us, and like we've talked about these small
Speaker 4: flights a lot, but like that's not the bulk of
Speaker 4: the flights they do right right.
Speaker 5: So ice Air right now has twelve large jets, you know,
Speaker 5: a three twenty seven thirty sevens chartered from different airlines
Speaker 5: that they're using for their deportations, and then these private
Speaker 5: jets are you know, used less for these smaller, high
Speaker 5: risk deportations. They're running like thirty thirty five flights a
Speaker 5: day at this point. So May twentieth turned out to
Speaker 5: be like kind of a big day for is air
Speaker 5: because that was the Djibouti flight. That was when ATS
Speaker 5: started using the Tyson callsign. It's also the day that
Speaker 5: the larger operation really just searched in activity. And you know,
Speaker 5: the other flight trackers tell me that ice Air used
Speaker 5: to take weekends and holidays off and they don't do
Speaker 5: that anymore. They were deporting people on juneteenth and July fourth.
Speaker 5: In May, ice operated a record number of flights, which
Speaker 5: was at least one thousand and eighty three flights that
Speaker 5: flight trackers recorded, one hundred and ninety of which were
Speaker 5: removal flights and then the rest are like these internal
Speaker 5: shuffle flights between different ice attention centers and return trips.
Speaker 5: And then in June they set a record again with
Speaker 5: one hundred and eighty seven flights, of which two hundred
Speaker 5: and nine were removal flights. All of this data is
Speaker 5: a witness at the border dot org and it's kept
Speaker 5: by Tom Cartwright, who is a real hero. He has
Speaker 5: been tracking flights basically by himself for five and a
Speaker 5: half years and he publishes very detailed monthly reports. And yeah,
Speaker 5: as you said earlier, you know he's been tracking this
Speaker 5: through the Biden administration too, which is how we know that,
Speaker 5: you know, the Trump deportation machine from the first term,
Speaker 5: you know, Biden didn't really slow it down that much,
Speaker 5: and now Trump is picking up the reins again and
Speaker 5: surging it again. So the airlines right now that are
Speaker 5: flying these larger removal flights are Global X also called
Speaker 5: Global Crossing Airlines, a Vellow Airlines, Eastern Air and on
Speaker 5: the international and except for ATS, who you know I
Speaker 5: talked about earlier, has their own contract, all of these
Speaker 5: carriers who fly for ICE are subcontracted through a flight
Speaker 5: broker called CSI Aviation. CSI Aviation signed a five year
Speaker 5: contract with the Biden administration last year that has been
Speaker 5: paused because of a lawsuit from a rival flight broker
Speaker 5: that wanted that contract. So since late February, CSI has
Speaker 5: been brokering these flights on a six month no bid
Speaker 5: contract that started at one hundred and twenty eight million
Speaker 5: dollars and was quickly doubled and then went up to
Speaker 5: two hundred and seventy four million, and then just a
Speaker 5: couple of days ago, I don't think anyone else has
Speaker 5: reported this, it was raised again to three hundred and
Speaker 5: thirty nine million dollars.
Speaker 3: So they've got about sixty.
Speaker 5: Million dollars left on this contract for the next six weeks,
Speaker 5: and that's before the huge windfall and funding that I
Speaker 5: just got from Trump's big beautiful bill. The administration has
Speaker 5: said it once to triple deportations, and right now they
Speaker 5: just don't have the aircraft for that. And DHS On
Speaker 5: Twitter and Instagram a couple of days ago they post
Speaker 5: I said this really ghoulish meme that said fire up
Speaker 5: the deportation planes, and there was like a skeleton lifting
Speaker 5: weights with a caption that said my body is a
Speaker 5: machine that turns ICE funding into mass deportations.
Speaker 3: So that's gross.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was really weird. They've been doing a lot
Speaker 4: of this like post stuff.
Speaker 5: Right, Like I said, they only have twelve jets right now.
Speaker 5: Then they're flying those capacity, so they can't triple deportations
Speaker 5: unless they start bringing in more airlines.
Speaker 3: So the other day.
Speaker 5: I posted a call to action to flight attendants and
Speaker 5: to flight attendant unions saying, you know, if you don't
Speaker 5: want your airline to do these flights, now is the
Speaker 5: time to tell them.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: CSI Aviation is.
Speaker 5: Run by a man named Alan Way and his daughter,
Speaker 5: Deborah Mastis. Alan Way is the former chair of the
Speaker 5: New Mexico Republican Party. He's hosted a bunch of Trump
Speaker 5: rallies over the years. He ran unsuccessfully for Senate and
Speaker 5: governor of New Mexico in the past on an anti
Speaker 5: immigrant platform, which local media at the time pointed out,
Speaker 5: you know, well, you're mostly doing deportation flights, so that
Speaker 5: would really be enriching yourself. His daughter, Deborah Masis, was
Speaker 5: one of the fake electors in New Mexico during the.
Speaker 3: Twenty twenty election.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: She was subpoenut by the House committee investigating the January
Speaker 5: sixth insurrection, and the New Mexico State Attorney General's office
Speaker 5: investigated her. Eventually, they're not press charges because she and
Speaker 5: the other fake electors claimed they didn't know they're fake
Speaker 5: certifications were going to be used for anything illegal. And
Speaker 5: the Project on Government Oversight has some pretty good reporting
Speaker 5: on CSI aviation if you want to see.
Speaker 4: That, Yeah, yeah, we'll put it in the show notes.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, insane.
Speaker 4: This whole thing is just like completely I would watch
Speaker 4: or look at some of the footage from inside deportation
Speaker 4: flights because it is inhumane.
Speaker 3: It's yeah.
Speaker 5: I mean, I hope that any flight attendants who are
Speaker 5: forced to work these flights can find a way to quit.
Speaker 5: But if they can't quit for financial reasons, because all
Speaker 5: of these people are, you know, very underpaid, you know,
Speaker 5: I hope that they can provide us with more information
Speaker 5: about what is going on inside these flights.
Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely that will be at least give people a
Speaker 4: chance to see what their tax dollars are being spent on.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I mean, one of the things that I've been thinking about,
Speaker 5: you know, terrorism is like a really loaded word that
Speaker 5: gets misused a lot against black and brown people, But
Speaker 5: I think that's the right word for all of these
Speaker 5: removals because they're random, they're violent, they're targeting civilians for
Speaker 5: political purpose, and their design to frighten the larger population
Speaker 5: potential victims. Right, the Trump administration is trying to scare
Speaker 5: all undocumented immigrants and anyone adjacent to them, since you know,
Speaker 5: a lot of citizens are being arrested too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, or green cardholders, people with buckets of documents are
Speaker 4: being deported a rendition right now.
Speaker 5: And they're saying, you know, they're trying to make them
Speaker 5: so scared that if they don't self deport they could
Speaker 5: end up in South Sudan, they could end up in Mauritania.
Speaker 5: You know, that's what this policy is designed to do,
Speaker 5: is to terrorize the people of this country.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, it's pretty bleak.
Speaker 4: We have an encrypted email address, so if you are
Speaker 4: I guess a deportation flight attendant and you would like
Speaker 4: to talk to someone, I can pass it on to
Speaker 4: give you. In two you might have your an encrypted
Speaker 4: email address and you can plug.
Speaker 2: It if you do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can definitely leak to me on signal.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah. Nice.
Speaker 4: We have cool zone tips at ProtonMail dot com or
Speaker 4: cool zone tips at proton dot me. I believe they
Speaker 4: both work. It's only encrypted if the address that it's
Speaker 4: sent from is also encrypted, So in the symptance. You
Speaker 4: would need a proton mail or you can cook up
Speaker 4: your own encryption. Yeah, that would be the way to
Speaker 4: get in touch if you want to get in touch this. Yeah,
Speaker 4: this just fucking sucks, like and there's going to be
Speaker 4: so much more of it in the next couple of
Speaker 4: years with this budget, Like, this is going to become
Speaker 4: what it already isn't everyday thing.
Speaker 2: This is going to become even more common.
Speaker 6: I know.
Speaker 4: They're also like they're doing some weird shuffle to avoid
Speaker 4: sanctions with Venezuelan airlines.
Speaker 5: Right, yeah, they fly I believe it is, to Honduras
Speaker 5: and then Venezuela flies their own plane to Honduras to
Speaker 5: pick them up.
Speaker 4: Right, yeah cool, I'm sure that's you have a great
Speaker 4: time when they get better Venezuela and Venezuela is also
Speaker 4: offering humanitarian flights for its citizens stuck in Mexico right now. So, like,
Speaker 4: if people want to do something about this, what can
Speaker 4: they do?
Speaker 5: The first thing you can do is boycott Avello Airlines.
Speaker 5: They are commercial airlines, so don't fly with them. You
Speaker 5: can write to the airlines you use regularly right now
Speaker 5: and tell them that if they are considering contracting with
Speaker 5: Ice not to that you will boycott them too. You
Speaker 5: can complain to the FAA about the safety issues on
Speaker 5: these flights. I doubt that they'll do anything, but I
Speaker 5: think there's value in saying something anyway. If you have
Speaker 5: contacts in aviation or in any of the countries that
Speaker 5: these people are being sent to, and you find something out,
Speaker 5: you can leak to me on signal. And if you
Speaker 5: work in aviation, tell your airline and your union right
Speaker 5: now that you are not going to operate these flights.
Speaker 5: And if you want to get started tracking flights yourself.
Speaker 5: We need a lot of help, especially in the overnight hours.
Speaker 5: A good first step is to go to Globe dot
Speaker 5: adsb exchange dot com and in the general search window
Speaker 5: type Tyson.
Speaker 4: You've been doing really, really great reporting on this, and
Speaker 4: I'm sure people want to continue to follow it. It
Speaker 4: is a shame that other outlets are not running it.
Speaker 3: But God bless them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just try.
Speaker 5: Out there if you want to know what James is
Speaker 5: talking about. There's a brief explanation at the end of
Speaker 5: one of my stories that I've written recently at hard
Speaker 5: g History dot ghost dot io. I have a couple
Speaker 5: stories there about the recent flights to Africa, and you
Speaker 5: can read the bottom and you'll find out what James
Speaker 5: is talking about.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a little teaser for you, right, go get
Speaker 4: the t Yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, thank you for joining us. I'm sure we'll hear
Speaker 2: from you again soon.
Speaker 3: Thank you, James.
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Speaker 3: Thanks for listening.