J.D. Vance's campaign plane carried anti-immigrant rhetoric. Now it carries shackled deportees

Yahoo

3 days ago

SIERRA VISTA, ARIZONA - AUGUST 01: Republican vice presidential nominee U.S. Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) boards his plane as he departs Arizona following a tour of the U.S. southern border with Mexica, on August 01, 2024 in Sierra Vista, Arizona. Vance was visiting the border on the final stop of his first visit to the Southwest as a vice presidential candidate. (Photo by)
After Donald Trump tapped him as his running mate, J.D. Vance crisscrossed the country and gave speech after speech in which he, like Trump, demonized immigrants and promised to mount a mass deportation effort if elected.
The Boeing 737 that he used to travel around the nation is now being used to deport immigrants. Records show that it has made at least 16 flights to Central and South American countries to deport immigrants this year.
An Arizona Mirror analysis of publicly available data and records obtained by the University of Washington through Freedom of Information Act requests confirms that the 22-year-old jet is part of the fleet of planes known as 'ICE Air' that swiftly shuttles immigrants out of the United States. ICE Air consists of multiple charter airlines and other private aviation companies around the country who are contracted to move immigrant detainees inside and out of the country.
Even before the plane was emblazoned with the Trump campaign logo in July 2024, it had been used at least four times to transport immigrant detainees during an earlier stint on the ICE Air fleet.
Data analyzed by the Mirror and confirmed by University of Washington Center for Human Rights researcher Phil Neff show that the aircraft flew four ICE Air missions in April and May of 2018.
Those four missions consisted of three removal flights to El Salvador and Guatemala, in which deportees were shipped off to those countries. The fourth was a transfer flight, in which detainees were moved from one ICE facility to another.
During those four missions in 2018, the aircraft carried between 456 to 504 passengers, according to ICE passenger data.
And records from 2020 detail 35 flights from known ICE hubs to Central and South American countries.
For example, on March 6, 2020, the aircraft took off from the Alexandria Airport in Louisiana, where ICE has a staging facility operated by private contractor GEO Group. It then landed at the José Joaquín de Olmedo International Airport in Guayaquil, Ecuador, before returning to Alexandria.
Earlier this year, that same airport was where military planes deported migrants.
Data on flights after 2018 is more difficult to confirm. ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security began redacting identifying information of the aircraft used in the deportation process, making it more difficult to see the movements of individual planes, though it is still possible in some cases.
In its response to questions from the Arizona Mirror, which DHS provided after this story was published, an unnamed 'senior DHS official' said that the department would not confirm whether the plane had been used for deportation flights.
'ICE uses sub-contractors to help carry out its mission to deport illegal aliens,' the unnamed official said in an email. 'These sub-contractors are not exclusive to ICE. For operational security, we will not confirm tail numbers of planes used for removing illegal aliens who are often violent criminals and foreign terrorists.'
Claims that most of the Trump administration's deportees are violent criminals have been repeatedly proven false.
Civil rights groups have been fighting for records about the program, while the agency regularly slow-walks records releases.
'Our experience in general with FOIAs — not just with the Department of Homeland Security, but especially with the Department of Homeland Security — is you should expect to have to sue to get information and for us that process involves getting approval from the highest level of the university,' Neff told the Mirror. 'So, we have had to be very selective in the case in which we have had to do that.'
Just five months after Trump and Vance won the election, the aircraft flew between multiple airports known for ICE Air activity before heading to an airport in Honduras known for deportation flights, then coming to rest at Mesa Gateway Airport.
It is not clear if Trump or Vance were aware of the aircraft's history prior to it becoming part of their campaign. A spokesperson for the White House directed the Mirror to the Department of Homeland Security and Vance's office. Vance and DHS did not respond.
The aircraft, N917XA, has a long and interesting history.
It started its life in the fleet of the now defunct Air Berlin before transferring to Orenair, another ill-fated airline based in Russia, until it was acquired by Swift Air.
Swift Air was a subcontractor for ICE and has previously conducted flights out of Mesa Gateway Airport, one of ICE's major airport hubs. Flight history shows the plane has made multiple flights to and from Mesa Gateway to other ICE airport hubs, as well as to Central and South American countries.
A previous inspector general report listed the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway airport as the operational headquarters for ICE Air.
Swift Air rebranded as iAero Airways in 2019, but went bankrupt in 2024. Eastern Air Express acquired much of iAero's assets, including N917XA, in April 2024. Three months later, it was unveiled as Vance's campaign jet. Eastern Air Express has also taken over the ICE Air contracts that iAero held.
The company also has connections to the Trump world.
From 1989 to 1992, Trump owned an airline company called 'Trump Shuttle,' which he purchased after meeting the Eastern Air Express CEO at a party. But the endeavor, like so many of Trump's businesses, was financially doomed and failed.
ICE Air operations in Arizona are beginning to ramp up as well, with Avelo Airlines starting to make deportation flights out of Mesa Gateway this month, amid financial woes and market competition.
Contracts to conduct deportation flights are lucrative for the companies involved. The Project on Government Oversight has reported that CSI Aviation, whose corporate director was a 'fake elector' in New Mexico for Trump, was awarded a no-bid contract to the tune of $128 million.
Neff said he wasn't surprised to learn that the aircraft which had been used for deportations had been utilized by the Trump campaign, although he did say there was an 'irony to it.'
During their research, Neff said they found that some of the contractors would often boast about how they could turn aircraft around from passenger style to luxury style on short notice, even finding aircraft that had previously been used for deportations later being used to shuttle professional sports teams or musicians around the country.
Immigrant advocates have been critical of the flights and say they raise a number of human rights and civil rights issues. Neff said those concerns are only being exacerbated by the Trump administration's push to speed up deportations.
'I think it is really impossible to overstate or understand the true scope of human impacts of a deportation program on this scale,' Neff said.
During their initial research, which covered flights between 2010 and 2020, Neff said they found a 'significant portion' of the passengers being deported still had ongoing cases that had not worked their way through the courts. The Trump administration has recently been defending its use of the Alien Enemies Act, the 1798 law that was last used during World War II to intern Japanese Americans, to do rapid deportations.
Once on the planes, immigrants are shackled at their feet and hands for the duration of the flight. In testimony in a class action lawsuit against the United States, where passengers were shackled for 23 hours sitting on the tarmac, some soiled themselves as they were denied access to the bathroom.
Abuse on ICE Air flights have been reported going back to 2016, when some passengers were left bloodied after being beaten and placed in body-bag style restraints. In some cases, deaths and miscarriages have been reported on ICE Air flights.
And transparency about the flights is getting worse, Neff noted.
While the first round of data obtained by researchers contained information such as flight destinations, flight costs and the tail numbers of aircraft, the government redacted that information from future releases.
While public flight history data is available to researchers, those researchers are working overtime to help track these flights.
'It is 8 or 10 hours, 7 days a week. It is a significant amount of time,' immigration activist Tom Cartwright, who has been voluntarily tracking ICE flights since Trump's first term, told the Mirror.
During that time, Cartwright has noticed that tracking the aircraft has gotten considerably more difficult, as federal agencies have sought to stymie watchdogs from monitoring the program by removing their aircraft from flight-tracking services.
But Cartwright and others have still found other ways to keep a watchful eye on the program.
'The transparency has gotten worse over time and worse under the (second) Trump administration,' Cartwright said, adding that taxpayers deserve to know how their money is being spent. 'To send some of these flights with relatively few people on them at a million dollars a flight seems pretty ridiculous, to be honest.'
The coming weeks and months are likely to keep Cartwright busy, as deportation flights have been ramping up. In the last couple of weeks, Cartwright said he has noticed flights have 'accelerated quite a bit,' and he said is anticipating May to be a record-breaking month for total flights.
Cartwright said his work is important because it sends a message to those on the flights — and those their deportation left behind in America.
'The people on the planes deserve the dignity of someone giving a damn,' he said. 'All these people on these planes, they have mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles. They deserve the dignity of someone understanding that they are being sent away to somewhere that, in some cases, they haven't seen in years or somewhere that is dangerous or where they won't be able to support their family.'
***UPDATE: This story has been updated with a comment from the Department of Homeland Security.
Arizona Mirror reporter Jerod MacDonald-Evoy can be reached at [e-mail].
Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: [e-mail].
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