Flights from Los Angeles Area Airport, related to U.S. immigration and customs enforcement deportation, have more than doubled in the month before Sunday.
ICE increased its activity in the area this month, carrying out multiple attacks on June 6th, including one in the fashion district. As of June 11th, 330 people had been arrested as of June 11th. Some of them have jumped out of the area, according to the White House. ICE has not released many details about detainees.
An ICE spokesperson told The Times that the agency has not provided details about future flights for security reasons. “The Ice Field Office coordinates with Ice Aviation Operations, headquartered in Mesa, Arizona, to arrange removal trips and domestic transfers that will be carried out using both commercial airlines and Ice Air Charter aircraft,” the spokesperson said in an email.
The Times reviewed and analyzed public flight data compiled by Tom Cartwright, a volunteer immigration advocate for witnesses at the border tracking ice flights. Cartwright tracked around 36,000 ice flights over five years using publicly published plane details and flight patterns.
Since the June raid began, almost 70% of deportation-related flights from the LA region began at a logistics airport in Southern California in Victorville, near the Adelanto Ice Processing Center. The Victorville airport is a public-use airport where Charter Airlines can operate unscheduled private flights. Victorville spokesman Sue Jones told the Times that the city could not confirm ice-related activities as flight details were not tracked.
There are also reports of flights from the Los Angeles area departing from other airports, such as Burbank International in Bakersfield and Meadowsfield.
Since June 6th, a quarter of the flights have traveled directly to nearby Phoenix Mesa Gateway Airport. About a fifth flight headed to El Paso, where the Mexican consulate said some people seized in LA were in custody.
In addition to headquarters, ice aviation operations are primarily operated from Miami. Alexandria, LA; San Antonio and Brownsville, Texas.
Chartered aircraft that make ice-related flights can have multiple stops or transfers in one day, both inside and outside the United States. However, the journeys taken by passengers are where they board and disembark, and cannot be tracked using publicly available data.
Overall, from January 1st to May, ICE suspended 685 deportations to more than 30 international destinations, according to witnesses in the latest report on the border. It’s almost the same as last year. ICE has confirmed that it will regularly fly outcasts to Central American countries, including other parts of the world, including Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, “for special high-risk missions.”
For planes flying through Victorville, they later stopped at airports in cities such as Las Vegas, Salt Lake City and Harlingen, Texas. Other destinations outside the continental United States include: San Juan in Puerto Rico. San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Mexico, tapachura. Guatemala; Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
Source link
