ICE Air is the little-known, one-way ticket transportation arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE Air relies on a network of contractors. The biggest was CSI Aviation of Albuquerque, New Mexico — whose contract with Homeland Security swelled from $88 to $96 million this year. In July, CSI says the ICE Air contract was awarded to a different company. So far this fiscal year, it’s $107 million over budget, NPR reports.
ICE Air Operations (IAO) is the air transportation arm of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
FACT SHEET for ICE Air:
The agency manages ICE Air Operations, with headquarters in Mesa [Phoenix Mesa Gateway Airport], to transport detainees by charter flights. Unauthorized immigrants caught in the interior of the country are flown to detention centers, and then to their countries of origin, other than Mexico
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ICE Air, Flying Deportees Home, $107M Over Budget
Here's just one story from the report:
" . . . I left Guatemala in 1983,” said Luis Alberto Castro, 53. He overstayed a student visa 35 years ago, started a remodeling business in Salt Lake City, raised a family, then got arrested and deported. Castro was picked up by immigration agents after he was pulled over by the cops for speeding. He complains ICE Air treated everyone like a felon.
“We were handcuffed the whole time,” he said. “They shouldn’t be treating us like total criminals.” On the flight from Mesa, Az., to Guatemala City, . . ."
ICE Air flew more than 97,000 migrants one-way back to where they came from last year. Most went to Guatemala, followed, in order, by Honduras, El Salvador, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Ecuador, and Colombia.
FACT SHEET for ICE Air:
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Saturday, May 27, 2017
There have been a great many negative stories in the news about horrific experiences on American airlines. Well, here is an airline that might generate nightmares.
CNN reports on flights on which the passengers are handcuffed and all of them have one-way tickets.
Planes chartered by ICE Air Operations, the division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement that coordinates the transportation and deportation of detained immigrants, fly more than 100,000 people back to their home countries every year
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IAO facilitates the transportation and removal of aliens via commercial flights; and since 2006, it has transported and/or removed hundreds of thousands of aliens using air charter services.
IAO procures the majority of its charter flight services from vendors through the General Services Administration (GSA) Schedule. IAO chartered aircraft are a combination of Boeing 737s and MD-80s, capable of transporting 135 aliens
Mexican nationals ordered removed from the United States travel on domestic flights from various U.S. cities to Southern tier cities such as San Diego, Calif. and Brownsville, Texas. They are then bused across the U.S.-Mexico border.
Other foreign nationals ordered removed are flown from various U.S. cities or IAO hub cities such as Mesa, Ariz., San Antonio, Texas, Alexandria, La., and Miami, Fla., to Central and South America, and other countries.
Blogger Note:
This information from https://www.ice.gov was last Reviewed/Updated: 07/07/2016
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Here's a story by Rafael Carranza from 28 April of last year:
How much does it cost to deport one migrant? It depends
". . . Detention is the largest expense
Detention is by far the costliest part of deporting an undocumented immigrant, said David Bier, an immigration policy analyst with the libertarian CATO Institute.
“You have to pay to monitor them around the clock, you have to pay to feed them every single day, you have to tend to their other needs, health and so forth,” he said. “So it’s an extremely expensive project to detain everybody they arrest.”
It costs on average about $180 a day to detain an individual, with the average length of detention at approximately 30 days, according to the government's most recent data. Based on those figures, an average immigration detention costs $5,400.
“The only thing that comes close is the costs of actually hiring the agents to do the arrests,” Bier said.
Federal law requires ICE to keep all of its 34,000 detention beds full. Trump’s executive order calls for increased detention space on the U.S.-Mexico border. . .
Link > https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/immigration/2017/04/28/deportation-costs-illegal-immigration/99541736/
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