Ice’s secretive flights and deportation hub: a Guardian investigation

The Trump administration is moving immigrants detained as part of its deportation agenda in ways that violate their constitutionally protected rights, a Guardian US investigation into the federal deportation program has found.

The Guardian has reviewed leaked data from charter airline Global Crossing (GlobalX) that detailed the journeys of tens of thousands of immigrants who have been shuttled around the country before deportation. We also took a close look at an Alexandria, Louisiana, facility run by the Geo Group, a private contractor, that has emerged as Trump’s deportation hub. Here are our findings after a four-month investigation:

44,000 immigrants, 1,700 flights, 100 days

• GlobalX carried out more than 1,700 flights for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the vast majority of them between domestic US airports, between January and May. The airline transported nearly 1,000 children, including nearly 500 children under the age of 10, and 22 infants.

• For many immigrants, the flight paths were long, with multiple legs and layovers. Nearly 3,600 people were moved around repeatedly, forced to board five or more GlobalX flights.

• Immigrants were also moved between detention facilities more than before. The average number of transfers per person has markedly increased in the past six months, and some detained immigrants have been moved as many as 10 or 20 times.

• Detainees were moved around the US without notice, to locations far from their families, communities and legal counsel – leading to apparent violations of constitutional due process rights.

• Along their journeys, immigrants say they were repeatedly kept in the dark about where they were going. Some say they were threatened by immigration agents with long-distance transfers and separation from their families if they did not accept voluntary deportation.

• The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said that immigrants in custody are informed about their transfers and allowed to contact their families throughout their detention. “Claims that transfers of detainees are being ‘weaponized’ or ‘hidden’ are also categorically false,” the DHS said.

The ‘black hole’ where immigrants disappear

• The GlobalX flight manifests show that a small regional airport in Alexandria, Louisiana, has become the transfer and deportation hub of Trump’s mass deportation program. Twenty thousand migrant detainees passed through the Alexandria airport at a rate of almost 200 a day during the first 100 days of Trump’s second term.

• The Alexandria staging facility, which opens up directly on to the airport tarmac, allowing immigration authorities easy access to Ice charter flights, is supposed to hold detainees for a maximum of 72 hours.

• The Guardian reviewed detailed DHS data, interviewed 10 former Alexandria detainees or their loved ones, and reviewed legal filings and contract documents to reveal that the center is routinely holding people for longer than 72 hours, is accused of a pattern of due process violations, and has been abruptly absolved of certain healthcare standards.

• Former detainees told the Guardian they could not change their clothes or underwear at all while detained there, experienced lengthy delays in receiving medication and medical care, and in some cases had no telephone access to call their loved ones or legal representatives. The center does not provide any space for legal visitation or confidential legal phone calls, leading some lawyers to label it a “black box”.

• The Trump administration has denied that immigrants are being mistreated in detention and said “Ice has higher detention standards than most US prisons”. The Geo Group said its facility is never “overcrowded”.