Deportation flights under Trump have reached all-time highs, with airlines transitioning to conceal location tracking data that once allowed these actions to be publicly traced. Advocates warn that secrecy about flights impedes accountability, as family and community members are left searching for loved ones facing removal.
Record Numbers of Deportation Flights
Immigration activists monitoring deportation flights indicate that the Trump administration’s deportation flights are now at record highs since monitoring commenced in 2020. Tom Cartwright, a seasoned monitor of ICE flights, recorded 1,214 deportations-related flights during July alone, shattering the previous monthly record and projecting an increase in removals.
From January through July of this year, Cartwright documented nearly 6,000 deportation-related flights nationwide, marking a 41 percent increase compared to the same period in 2024. Most flights have transported migrants to Central America, Mexico, or border transfer points, with a smaller number headed to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for temporary holding before transfer.
Airlines Blocking Tracking Data
Protesters say airlines’ contracting out of deportations is becoming increasingly secretive about flight data on public tracking websites. Operators such as GlobalX, Eastern Air Express, and Avelo Airlines have obscured tail numbers under the FAA’s Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed (LADD) program, making flight tracking challenging for researchers, journalists, and family members.
In addition to blocked tail numbers, airlines also reconfigured call signs used to identify aircraft in flight. Initially easier to identify, most were replaced with dummy codes, which contributed to the barriers between those attempting to monitor flights in real-time. Activists argue that this secrecy undermines accountability by rendering deportation flights nearly impossible to trace.
Community Monitoring Efforts
Despite bans, rights organizations continue to document deportation flights through alternative means. Activists at Seattle’s King County International Airport, also known as Boeing Field, utilize county-operated cameras to monitor ICE activity, counting detainees and documenting any apparent health problems. The same is happening in airports across the country, facilitated by grassroots organizations dedicated to staying informed.
At Boeing Field, video captures detainees in handcuffs being escorted off buses and searched before boarding flights. Cameras, put in place in 2023 following county authorities’ instructions to surveil ICE activity, stream the process, and provide rare insight into the conditions migrants are subjected to on the move. For countless families, livestreams are the only way to know about the movement of detained relatives, as ICE rarely provides direct notification of deportation.
Human Rights and Legal Matters
Organizations such as Human Rights First, which recently took over Cartwright’s tracking program under the name “ICE Flight Monitor,” caution that denying access to deportation information hinders accountability for actions affecting thousands of people. Activists observe that the flights carry vulnerable individuals, many of whom pursue claims for asylum or risk persecution and brutality upon repatriation to their homelands.
Immigration activists note that transparency is necessary, as ICE typically does not disclose information about its flights. Family members, legal counsel, and humanitarian organizations often are unaware where individuals deported are being sent, making it harder to provide legal services or protect migrants’ rights following removal.
Looking Ahead
With record deportation flight levels and with watchdog transparency hacked back, immigration rights activists vow to keep monitoring these operations with people-based networks.
Supporters caution that without more oversight, the interaction of record deportations and airline secrecy can lead to an entire system of removals out of the public eye. They again call for congressional and judicial oversight, as well as for encouraging local police to implement monitoring practices like those in Seattle.
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Resources:
- https://apnews.com/article/ice-deportation-immigration-flights-f61941d31adf43a6a01cccc720f3bb01
- https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/us-deportation-flights-hit-record-highs-as-carriers-try-to-hide-the-planes-advocates-say/ar-AA1LjWnw?ocid=BingNewsBrowse
- https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/08/27/us-deportation-flights-hit-record-highs-carriers-try-hide-planes-advocates-say.html
- https://ground.news/article/us-deportation-flights-hit-record-highs-as-carriers-try-to-hide-the-planes-advocates-say
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