This summer, don't fly deportation airlines

A small airline is helping ICE carry out cruel deportations.

By Matthew Boulay

This month, Avelo Airlines—backed by Wall Street financiers and with the silent complicity of many public officials—began flying deportation routes for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Avelo, once known for budget travel, has signed a $150 million contract with ICE to operate deportation flights. The same airline offering weekend getaways is now helping remove from the United States men, women, and children—many of whom were denied fair hearings and basic protections.

Let’s be clear: Avelo is now complicit in one of the most shameful human rights violations of our time.

Under President Donald Trump’s public immigration crackdown, families are again being brutally separated. Children are being deported, including a 4-year old American citizen who was undergoing cancer treatment. A man who fled violence as a teenager was denied asylum hearings. Toddlers are processed for deportation without lawyers. Due process, a cornerstone of American justice, is being shredded for political optics.

And now, Avelo Airlines has negotiated a major contract with ICE, positioning itself as the vehicle of this malevolent deportation machine.

A 2-year-old U.S. citizen, identified in court documents as VML, was deported to Honduras with her mother after a routine immigration check-in in Louisiana. Despite her father's efforts to claim custody, ICE proceeded with the deportation, leading a federal judge to express strong suspicion that the child was deported without meaningful legal process.

A Cuban-born woman was arrested after a routine immigration check-in and separated from her infant child, a U.S. citizen. Three Honduran mothers were deported with their U.S. citizen children having been given virtually no opportunity to speak with lawyers or family members. Advocacy groups criticized ICE for deporting U.S. citizen children without due process.

These aren’t bureaucratic mistakes. They are harsh and cruel acts, carried out in our names, on our soil, and in our skies.

Avelo is now advised by Jefferies Group—a global investment bank helping the airline raise $100 million. Though there is no evidence that Jefferies is investing in Avelo, it is facilitating the airline’s access to capital markets and aiding its growth even as the airline participates in deportation operations.

This is deeply troubling. Jefferies markets itself as an ESG (environmental, social, and governance) leader committed to positive social impact. That claim is ludicrous now that it has chosen to help a company with a government contract for deportation flights that tear apart families.

Jefferies can’t have it both ways. A firm claiming to support equity and dignity can’t also help find financing for a client that traumatizes children and adults alike. That’s moral incoherence.

It is a bedrock principle of American law that everyone is guaranteed due process—regardless of immigration status. By overwhelming majorities, Americans of all parties consistently declare their strong belief in the constitutional right of a fair trial before a judge and jury. But, under the Trump administration, hundreds to thousands of people are being denied that right. ICE agents are replacing judges with spreadsheets and juries with airline schedules.

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong threatened to withdraw a tax break if Avelo fails to honor the state’s commitments to public safety and the rule of law. But most other elected officials have remained silent in the face of this extraordinary inhumanity.

These officials are not powerless. State and local governments can revoke subsidies, investigate, and challenge Avelo. The tools exist. The question is whether our leaders have the courage to use them.

We’ve seen this before. In Trump’s first term, thousands of people—including U.S. citizens and legal residents—were detained, and some were deported. People were pulled from workplaces, hospitals, and homes without warning or recourse. That system is coming back—faster, slicker, and more privatized.

It’s not enough to quietly disagree. We must push back against injustice. We must speak out. That is our obligation as citizens and as humans—not simply to those being deported today but to the values we claim to hold dear.

Across the country, protests are growing. At airports, including in front of Avelo counters, people are standing up. In Sonoma County, Calif., activists rallied to demand that Avelo cancel its ICE flights and withdraw from the deportation economy. Nationwide, travelers are pledging to boycott. Religious leaders, civil rights groups, and ordinary Americans are joining in defense of families under siege. Our group, the Coalition to Stop Avelo, is organizing in multiple states an anti-Trump, anti-Avelo day of action on May 31.

Investors and financial partners like Jefferies must be pressured to walk away—not look the other way.

Travelers should choose other airlines. Elected officials must be asked where they stand. If we let this happen in silence, we are complicit in the suffering that follows. Paraphrasing Dante, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said it best: "The hottest place in hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict."

Matthew Boulay is a veteran of the war in Iraq, former Director of the Campaign for a New GI Bill and founder of The Campaign to Stop Avelo.

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