Don’t Look Now, but ICE Is Deporting Some Central American Families by Air
Catch-and-release continues for others, but secretive program seems to be reducing the flow at the border
By Todd Bensman on December 1, 2021
ICE Air Operations is capable of facilitating the removal of alien nationals from any location in the continental United States to anywhere in the world via commercial airline or charter aircraft, ensuring their safe and humane return to their countries of origin.
— Deputy Assistant Director for ICE Air Operations Katrina S. Kane, on the ICE Air Operations website.
deportation flight
MCALLEN, Texas — At this city’s main airport and others in South Texas, President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security is carrying out secretive and escalating air deportations of tens of thousands of migrant border-crossers, a high percentage of them evidently Central American women and children who were supposed to be protected from deportation and, more recently, Haitians.
The air deportation operations to distant home countries, a tactic that has proven highly effective at deterring follow-on illegal migration, appear to have ferried home significant numbers of migrants who recently crossed the southern border illegally — probably well in excess of 65,000 from August through October and thousands more in November, a Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) analysis of aircraft flight data, direct observation at the McAllen airport, a pilot interview, and other public information indicate.
That may represent a relatively small percentage of the roughly 565,000 total border encounters during this time frame, but merely a decent probability of air deportation flights home has long proven to hold real power to persuade migrants to stay home and especially not to risk fortunes in smuggling money on journeys that go nowhere. The flights, which began in August and have continued at a daily pace through November, happen to coincide with a third consecutive monthly decline in migrant border encounters in October (by a significant 30,000 drop from the September number) after skyrocketing every month from Biden’s election until the flights began.
https://cis.org/Bensman/Dont-Look-Now-ICE-Deporting-Some-Central-American-Families-Air
