Budget airline begins deportation flights for ICE with start of Arizona operations

PHOENIX -- A budget airline that serves mostly small U.S. cities began federal deportation flights Monday out of Arizona, a move that's inspired an online boycott petition and sharp criticism from the union representing the carrier’s flight attendants.

Avelo Airlines announced in April it had signed an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security to make charter deportation flights from Mesa Gateway Airport outside Phoenix. It said it will use three Boeing 737-800 planes for the flights.

The Houston-based airline is among a host of companies seeking to cash in on President Donald Trump's campaign for mass deportations.

Congressional deliberations began last month on a tax bill with a goal of funding, in part, the removal of 1 million immigrants annually and housing 100,000 people in U.S. detention centers. The GOP plan calls for hiring 10,000 more U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and investigators.

Avelo was launched in 2021 as COVID-19 still raged and billions of taxpayer dollars were propping up big airlines. It saves money mainly by flying older Boeing 737 jets that can be bought at relatively low prices. And it operates out of less-crowded and less-costly secondary airports, flying routes that are ignored by the big airlines. It said it had its first profitable quarter in late 2023.

Andrew Levy, Avelo's founder and chief executive, said in announcing the agreement last month that the airline's work for ICE would help the company expand and protect jobs.

“We realize this is a sensitive and complicated topic," said Levy, an airline industry veteran with previous stints as a senior executive at United and Allegiant airlines.

Avelo did not grant an interview request from The Associated Press.

Financial and other details of the Avelo agreement — including destinations of the deportation flights — haven’t publicly surfaced. The AP asked Avelo and ICE for a copy of the agreement, but neither provided the document. The airline said it wasn’t authorized to release the contract.

Several consumer brands have shunned being associated with deportations, a highly volatile issue that could drive away customers. During Trump's first term, authorities housed migrant children in hotels, prompting some hotel chains to say that they wouldn't participate.

Many companies in the deportation business, such as detention center providers The Geo Group and Core Civic, rely little on consumer branding. Not Avelo, whose move inspired the boycott petition on change.org and drew criticism from the carrier's flight attendants union, which cited the difficulty of evacuating deportees from an aircraft in an emergency within the federal standard of 90 seconds or less.

“Having an entire flight of people handcuffed and shackled would hinder any evacuation and risk injury or death,” the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA said in a statement. “It also impedes our ability to respond to a medical emergency, fire on board, decompression, etc. We cannot do our jobs in these conditions.”

In New Haven, Connecticut, where Avelo flies out of Tweed New Haven Airport, Democratic Mayor Justin Elicker urged Avelo’s CEO to reconsider. “For a company that champions themselves as ‘New Haven’s hometown airline,’ this business decision is antithetical to New Haven’s values,” Elicker said in a statement.

Protests were held outside airports in Arizona and Connecticut on Monday.

In Mesa, over 30 protesters gathered on a road leading up to the airport, holding signs that denounced Trump’s deportation efforts. In Connecticut, about 150 people assembled outside Tweed New Haven Airport, calling on travelers to boycott Avelo.

John Jairo Lugo, co-founder and community organizing director of Unidad Latina en Acción in New Haven, said protesters hope to create a financial incentive for Avelo to back out of its work for the federal government.

“We need to cause some economical damage to the company to really convince them that they should be on the side with the people and not with the government,” Lugo said.

Mesa, a Phoenix suburb with about 500,000 people, is one of five hubs for ICE Air, the immigration agency's air transport operation for deportations. ICE Air operated nearly 8,000 flights in a 12-month period through April, according to the advocacy group Witness at the Border.

ICE contracts with an air broker, CSI Aviation, that hires two charter carriers -- GlobalX and Eastern Air Express -- to do most of the flights, said Tom Cartwright, who tracks flight data for Witness at the Border.

Cartwright said it was unusual in recent years for commercial passenger carriers to carry out deportation flights.

“It’s always been with an air broker who then hires the carriers, and the carriers have not been regular commercial carriers, or what I call retail carriers, who are selling their own tickets,” Cartwright said. “At least since I have been involved (in tracking ICE flights), they’ve all been charter companies.”

Avelo will be a sub-carrier under a contract held by New Mexico-based CSI Aviation, which didn’t respond to questions about how much money Avelo would make under the agreement.

Avelo provides passenger service to more than 50 cities in the U.S., as well as locations in Jamaica, Mexico and the Dominican Republic. Avelo does not operate regular commercial passenger service out of Mesa Gateway Airport, said airport spokesman Ryan Smith.

In February 2024, Avelo said it had its first profitable quarter, though it didn't provide details. In an interview two months later with the AP, Levy declined to provide numbers, saying the airline was a private company and had no need to provide that information publicly. ___ Associated Press writer Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed to this report.