Dozens of flights leave Willow Run Airport as ‘ICE Air’

By Ben Warren, bwarren@detroitnews.com

Constitution flights out of the Willow Run Airport close to Ypsilanti started carrying a brand new kind of passenger in Could: detained immigrants in ICE custody.

Throughout the second half of 2025, constitution flights operated by personal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contractors left Willow Run thrice per week. Most of them despatched detainees to deportation hubs in Texas and Louisiana, in keeping with information shared with The Detroit Information by Human Rights First, a nonprofit that advocates for refugee and immigrant rights.

Now, native activists are organizing a marketing campaign to stress the airport’s authority from permitting detained immigrants to fly out of the historic Wayne County airport, despite the fact that authorized consultants say the authority is powerless to cease the flights. Activists oppose the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and argue that Wayne County sources shouldn’t assist the federal authorities’s aim of deporting 1 million folks every year.

“Detroit and Wayne County have an extended historical past of accepting immigrants from all around the world,” stated George B. Washington, a Detroit-based immigration legal professional.

He says a gaggle of neighborhood members will demand that the Wayne County Airport Authority (WCAA) cancel the contracts of constitution carriers that function ICE flights on the WCAA board assembly on Wednesday.

“We would like them to cancel these flights out of Willow Run,” Washington stated.

The hassle echoes a broader nationwide technique by immigration rights activists to focus on the airports and airways that take part in ICE operations.

However Mark Schwartz, an legal professional with the Troy-based legislation agency Driggers, Schultz & Herbst, stated stopping ICE contractors from utilizing the airport would quantity to discriminating towards carriers primarily based on the aim of the flights, which airports can not do in the event that they obtain federal funding.

“So long as the constitution operator is working legally, the airport authority can’t cease the flights,” stated Schwartz, who’s a licensed specialist in aviation legislation, in addition to a pilot and flight teacher.

No less than one stress marketing campaign towards the operator of a few of the constitution flights has been profitable. The finances provider Avelo Airways just lately ended a contract with ICE after months of public backlash over its deportation flights out of an Arizona airport. Critics have organized protests at airports in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Connecticut, whereas state lawmakers in Connecticut and Delaware launched laws to dam Avelo’s tax incentives in these states.

Avelo spokesperson Courtney Goff instructed The Information that the ICE constitution program “offered short-term advantages however in the end didn’t ship sufficient constant and predictable income to beat its operational complexity and prices.”

The three different airways that operated ICE constitution flights out of Willow Run in 2025 — GlobalX, Key Lime and Jap Air Specific — didn’t reply to emails or cellphone calls from The Information.

Erica Donerson, the airport authority’s vp of exterior affairs and communications, wrote in an electronic mail that the WCAA “doesn’t have any involvement in agreements between airways and their companions, together with federal businesses, so long as these agreements meet authorized and security necessities.”

Donerson declined to handle particular questions in regards to the flights or affirm that ICE flights are going down at Willow Run.

ICE’s Midwest and Washington, D.C.-based media places of work didn’t reply to electronic mail requests for remark. The White Home declined to remark and referred The Information to ICE.

What the information reveals

Human Rights First makes use of public flight-tracking information to construct a database of deportation and home switch flights, which it publishes in a month-to-month “ICE Flight Monitor” report.

Savi Arvey, director of analysis at Human Rights First, stated her staff makes use of patterns involving flight numbers, routes and operators to establish the flights. The method is constructed on the work of Tom Cartwright, a former Illinois-based banking govt who started monitoring deportation flights in 2019.

By way of the reviews, the ICE Flight Monitor staff tracks altering flight and deportation patterns that inform its advocacy work. The Information additionally spot-checked particular person flights within the ICE Flight Monitor information towards information on the general public flight-tracking web site FlightAware. A Information reporter and photographer additionally visually confirmed a Key Lime Air flight on the tarmac at Willow Run on Sunday.

Arvey stated the federal authorities’s immigration crackdown in 2025 created a higher want for detention house and constitution flights.

There are actually almost 70,000 immigrants in ICE custody, in keeping with detention administration information printed on the company’s web site. And about 1,800 of these persons are in Michigan’s 5 detention amenities on a given day, together with 1,391 at North Lake Processing Middle in Baldwin, the most important detention middle within the state.

Arvey’s group discovered that the variety of ICE constitution flights nationwide virtually tripled between January and December 2025, growing to greater than 1,500 flights on 37 completely different planes.

“We’ve simply seen this large improve throughout the nation of those shuffle flights given ramped-up inside enforcement,” stated Savi Arvey, director of analysis at Human Rights First, which printed the ICE flight information.

ICE Flight Monitor information confirmed that flights out of Willow Run started ramping up in June, the identical month ICE reopened North Lake for immigration detention.

From July till the top of 2025, ICE constitution flights departed Willow Run almost each Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday by way of the top of the yr. The sample continued into January 2026, with at the very least six ICE constitution flights leaving Willow Run by way of the primary two weeks of the brand new yr.

Arvey stated that all the ICE flights from Willow Run in 2025 seemed to be home transfers, not deportation flights. “It doesn’t appear that persons are being immediately deported from that airport,” she stated.

However Alexandria, La. and Harlingen, Texas — two of the most important deportation staging areas within the nation — have been widespread locations. The information confirmed that 57 out of 88 ICE constitution flights from Willow Run landed in Alexandria or Harlingen.

Data printed by the Deportation Information Undertaking, a gaggle of legal professionals and lecturers that makes use of Freedom of Data requests to acquire ICE information, additional emphasised the connection between the flights from Willow Run and deportations.

On Aug. 5, for instance, a Boeing 737 operated by Jap Air Specific landed at Willow Run from Youngstown, Ohio. It picked up ICE detainees, then departed for Harlingen, Texas.

The airplane landed at Harlingen’s Valley Worldwide Airport simply after 1 p.m. Later that evening, 44 folks beforehand detained in Michigan have been booked into ICE’s Port Isabel Service Processing Middle, 30 miles from the Harlingen airport.

Ten of the detainees transferred from Michigan have been deported inside two days. Over the subsequent two weeks, ICE eliminated all however one among them from the nation.

How ‘ICE Air’ works

ICE Air Operations has two predominant parts, in keeping with its web site: Air Constitution Operations, which transports ICE detainees on chartered flights, and Business Air Operations, which escorts detainees on industrial flights. The constitution wing of IAO is usually known as “ICE Air.”

“Air Constitution Operations transports detained aliens ordered faraway from the USA to their international locations of origin, and transfers detained aliens domestically all through the USA to varied ICE-managed detention amenities and staging areas by way of constitution plane,” a press release on ICE’s web site says.

Regardless of that title, ICE doesn’t immediately e-book flights with constitution carriers. That job belongs to CSI Aviation Inc., an airline dealer primarily based in Killeen, Texas.

The corporate, which at present holds an annual contract value $600 million, manages the portfolio of firms that function the flights, in keeping with USASpending.com, a federal authorities web site that tracks spending. The language within the supply order says the aim of the contract is “to offer each day scheduled giant plane & particular threat constitution flights to facilitate ICE’s enforcement and removing operations of unlawful aliens.”

“In apply, what that entails is detained migrants are transported between detention facilities within the U.S….on privately chartered planes at a value of billions of {dollars},” defined Phil Neff, a analysis coordinator on the College of Washington’s Middle for Human Rights.

“There’s additionally an essential position of business flights, notably for deportations to locations which might be primarily not in Latin America,” he stated.

The ICE Flight Monitor information doesn’t embody details about industrial flights, although in a single latest case, two Detroit residents in ICE custody have been taken to a detention middle in Texas on a Southwest Airways flight, in keeping with Washington, the immigration lawyer.

However constitution flights are “the central infrastructure of the detention-deportation pipeline,” in keeping with Neff.

4 predominant air constitution firms operated home switch and deportation flights in 2025, in keeping with the December ICE Flight Monitor report: World Crossings Airways (often known as GlobalX), Jap Air Specific, Avelo Airways and Key Lime Air, although Avelo introduced earlier this month that it could cease working flights for ICE.

GlobalX was essentially the most lively ICE constitution operator final yr, in keeping with the ICE Flight Monitor report, answerable for 47% of all ICE constitution flights nationwide.

However the Kansas Metropolis, Mo.-based Jap Air Specific flew most incessantly out of Willow Run, working 57 flights largely to areas in Louisiana, Texas, New Jersey, Virginia and Ohio.

Key Lime, primarily based in Colorado, was the second most lively ICE constitution provider out of Willow Run, flying to Alexandria, La., 17 instances. GlobalX flew 10 instances from Willow Run to Louisiana, Texas and New Jersey; and Avelo flew simply 4 instances to Louisiana, Arizona and Florida.

Native activists need flights canceled

A bunch known as Detroit Committee to Cease ICE is organizing Wayne County residents to voice their opposition to the ICE constitution flights on the WCAA board assembly, stated Heather Miller, a member of the group and longtime Detroit resident.

“We’re going to demand that they revoke all ICE contracts,” Miller stated.

She instructed The Information that the anti-ICE group “determined that it is a actually good level to attempt to cease Trump’s deportation scheme.”

The WCAA is managed by an impartial, seven-member board, at present chaired by Dennis Archer Jr., a Detroit investor and son of ex-Mayor Dennis Archer.

Archer Jr. didn’t reply to a cellphone name requesting a remark.

The board’s vice chair, Michael Ajami, a Michigan assistant legal professional common, directed inquiries to Donerson, the WCAA spokesperson, who wrote in an electronic mail, “

Airport authority wields restricted energy

Requires the airport authority to cease ICE contractors from working constitution flights out of Willow Run will probably go nowhere, in keeping with Schwartz, the Troy legal professional.

“My preliminary ideas are that it’s going to be extraordinarily troublesome to discriminate on the aim of these constitution flights which might be leaving the airport,” he stated.

Schwartz stated that despite the fact that the flights are operated by personal firms, the final word buyer is the federal authorities. For an airport like Willow Run, which receives a lot of its funding by way of grants from the Federal Aviation Administration and different federal businesses, stopping the flights could possibly be problematic.

Willow Run opened a brand new taxiway earlier this month, funded by $54.6 million in FAA grants, plus $8.7 million from the State of Michigan.

“It is a granular assault on what they (activists) don’t like, that are deportation flights. However the airport authority has no energy to cease it,” Schwartz stated.

Even county-level motion to cease ICE flights can run into tough authorized points, in keeping with Neff, the Washington-based human rights researcher.

Neff defined {that a} 2019 ordinance banning ICE constitution flights in King County, Washington, was overturned after the U.S. Division of Justice filed a lawsuit. For just a few years, he stated, ICE flights moved to Yakima, in japanese Washington, as an alternative. However in 2023, a federal court docket dominated towards the county, deciding {that a} county ordinance couldn’t block the flights.

The court docket resolution hinged on the truth that the county initially leased the airport property from the federal authorities, which means the feds had the ultimate say.

Willow Run was briefly owned by the federal authorities throughout the Nineteen Forties, however the College of Michigan bought it in 1947 and offered the airport to Wayne County in 1977 for $1.

State Sen. Darrin Camilleri, D-Trenton, whose district contains Willow Run Airport, agreed that it was unlikely the airport authority might cease the ICE constitution flights, however stated the flights have been “horrible.”

He added: “It’s clearly not one thing I’m happy with or that our neighborhood is happy with … I don’t like that our airports are getting used as facilitators for any such motion.”

However others see the federal authorities’s immigration crackdown because the execution of a plan promised on the marketing campaign path.

“The American folks assist this,” stated state Sen. Jim Runestad, a Republican from White Lake, noting that immigration was, in his view, the principle situation that bought President Donald Trump elected in 2024.

“There’s a robust will that initially we get out the felony ingredient that came visiting the border,” Runestad stated.