5/13/20
By Tom Cartwright
DEATH FLIGHTS – 13 May 2020
13 Flights today –3 deportation flights, 2 to Honduras and 1 to Guatemala – and 5 flights shuffling people around the country.
Ø The detainee population decreased 1,000 to 27,900. Let’s be clear, this is not the result of ICE releasing people. To date they have only released less than 1,000 vulnerable people and CBS reported recently that court documents indicated that there in court documents it was disclosed that there are another 4,409 detainees that meet the same definition that have NOT been released. Moreover, there are over 5,000 people in custody that have no reason to be held because they have met the tests for asylum or other forms of protection.
- The reason the numbers are coming down is because deportations continue and no one is having the opportunity to exercise their legal right to seek asylum.
- The average stay now is up to 94 days now.
Ø Today the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration held a Democratic Roundtable and discussed the dangerous conditions in detention centers in this pandemic and the shuffling of detainees as we report here each day. It was 1 ½ hours and you can see it here.
Ø Today The El Paso Anti-Deportation Squad witnessed a deportation flight from El Paso to Honduras. The photo below is from their post in Witness earlier today.
Ø COVID continues to rage in detention centers and testing is ridiculously low. To date, 943 detainees have tested positive and only 1,788 have been tested, barley 7%. Shockingly, of those tested 53% have had COVID.
Here are the flights for today. The number behind the leg indicates a single individual planes path.
SAN ANTONIO to BROWNSVILLE – 1
BROWNSVILLE to HONDURAS – 1
HONDURAS to SAN ANTONIO – 1
ALEXANDRIA to GUATEMALA -2
ALEXANDRIA to MINNEAPOLIS – 3
MINNEAPOLIS to OMAHA – 3
OMAHA to KANSAS CITY – 3
KANSAS CITY to BROWNSVILLE – 3
BROWNSVILLE to ALEXANDRIA – 3
PHOENIX to EL PASO -4
EL PASO to HONDURAS – 4
HONDURAS to PHOENIX - 4
HONDURAS to ALEXANDRIA - 4
Note: ICE Air does not disclose their flights. Flight listing gleaned from public flight information, knowledge of detention center locations, air charter services and historic patterns. In rare cases, there may be a flight we miss, or include in error.