Abuses in the Air: Sports Travel and the Deportation Industry

University of Washington Center for Human Rights, June 2022

"Every week, thousands of migrants are shackled at the hands and feet and forced onto deportation flights to destinations across the globe.^[1] While the flights are contracted by U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), most are run by a shadowy network of private charter companies that operate with no effective oversight. In some cases, migrants are beaten or brutalized aboard the plane. In others, the planes transport them to situations where they are likely to experience harms as grave as torture, assault, or even enslavement. These practices violate U.S. law, international law, and written policies of the Department of Homeland Security, yet although abuses have been documented in human rights reports,^[2] described by journalists,^[3] discussed by legal scholars,^[4] aired in federal court,^[5] and reported through internal DHS mechanisms,^[6] neither DHS, nor the FAA, nor the U.S. Congress has taken any meaningful steps to stop abuses aboard deportation flights. Indeed, this remains a lucrative and largely secret business, in which contractors have billed U.S. taxpayers for over a million dollars per flight,^[7] received Covid-19 bailout funds^[8] despite operating in an industry which boomed during the pandemic,^[9] and may even receive payment whether they fly or not, under a guaranteed minimum payment scheme similar to that in place at many private detention centers.^[10]

Yet while condemnation of for-profit immigration prisons has grown in recent years,^[11] far less attention has been paid to the practices of private companies who transport migrants around the United States and across the globe. This report aims to peel back the secrecy surrounding their operations, in particular, by illustrating how connected they are to everyday entertainment activities which are beloved by so many Americans.

In fact, the same companies that contract with ICE to carry out deportations provide charter flights to dozens of collegiate and professional sports teams, from the National Football League, Major League Soccer, National Hockey League, National Basketball Association, and many collegiate sports organizations. Touring musicians, too, are flown to concerts by the same companies.^[12] From musical acts to athletic stars, many of Americans’ most-admired figures travel not only with the same companies, but often on the very same planes on which migrants experience abuse, which are rapidly reconfigured for luxury travel. As Kathleen Bergin has written, this means that “athletes must accept that they are sitting in a seat perhaps last occupied by a migrant bloodied from abuse, or a parent taken from her child.”^[13]

In this report, we document links between major sports teams, private companies, and specific planes on which abuses occurred. Our intention is not to excoriate entertainers – we understand that most athletes and musical performers are likely unaware that they have been flying in planes that double as airborne torture chambers – but simply to make these facts transparent. The secrecy that surrounds deportation flights have allowed too many of us to distance ourselves from the abuse funded with our tax dollars; understanding the connections between our government, air charter companies, and some of the most well-known institutions in our midst may help us begin to unravel these knots, untangling our complicity in the practices that draw profit from migrants’ pain."