Flight risk: ICE Air’s secrecy and systemic abuse in King County and beyond

Abstract

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deports tens of thousands of people each year through a system in which abuse is endemic and oversight is nonexistent. By failing to either regulate ICE or hold it accountable for abuse, the U.S. Federal Government is violating the human rights of deportees. This report focuses on the final link in the deportation process: ICE Air Operations deportation flights. We begin with an analysis of ICE Air data released through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) from FY 2011-2018. In conjunction with analysis of this data, investigation into federal agency policy demonstrates that ICE Air Operations procedure is inconsistent, ambiguous, and unregulated. Secondly, we describe human rights abuses that have occurred aboard flights and analyze the efficacy of external accountability mechanisms, finding that while such abuses likely violate numerous U.S. statutes and international human rights agreements, privatized chains of contracting and subcontracting relationships mean there is virtually no accessible channel for oversight or remedy. The opacity of these private business relationships is demonstrated through the case study of King County, an immigrant-friendly jurisdiction that is nonetheless complicit in deportation flights, with an average of 300 deportees picked up from King County International Airport each month.