5/21/20

By Josh Rubin

WitnessAtTheBorder.org is our web page, where we document the work we have been able to do while we shelter in place during the pandemic of the the Coronavirus. And what we have focused on is learning about the deportation flights of ICE Air.

ICE Air contracts with Classic Charters, which in turn has a contract with Swift Air, now known as IAero. This company runs what we call death flights. Why do we call them that?

To begin with, these flights carry people back to the countries that they fled. Why did they flee? Because they feared for their lives. Because they were threatened by violence. Because they were hungry. People leave their homes when their homes are on fire. And these planes deport them back to their devastated homes.

But that’s not all these planes are doing. In this pandemic, they are also moving people from ICE prison to ICE prison, meantime spreading the Coronavirus everywhere. And these flights of people who have been exposed and infected in our prisons, when they get to their home countries, are significant vectors of disease for the countries where they land.

So we track these flights. In fact, we are leading the effort to track them, and we are providing the information we gather to news sources.

These are apocalyptic times, a time when many of us face our own dangers and must turn some of our attention to our own survival. But we won’t forget the refugees stranded at the border or the children being loaded onto deportation flights or the imprisonment of terrified refugees facing the contagion that terrifies us all.

Follow us at WitnessAtTheBorder.org