This Week in ICE Flights, Nov. 8-14
Immigration and Custom Enforcement sent charter planes to Gary/Chicago International Airport five times this week, the most "round-up" flights in one place I've observed since I started tracking ICE flights.
What could explain this huge increase? I briefly wondered. ICE's Operation Midway Blitz(krieg) has been going on for months, but there's been on average only one ICE flight per week.
It soon became clear. Following hours of testimony alleging extreme overcrowding, inhumane conditions and a lack of food and water at the Broadview processing facility in the Chicago suburbs, a federal magistrate judge on Nov. 7 arranged to inspect the Broadview facility herself. She gave ICE six days to prepare. So there you go.
One of those flights to Chicago also made an impromptu stop in Baltimore – likely due to a mechanical issue on the Coast Guard plane that usually does Baltimore round-ups – allowing Scott Tiffin, chief of staff for Maryland state senator Clarence Lam, to take the above photo. At least 14 shackled individuals were loaded onto the plane, including at least 4 women, before flying to El Paso.
On Tuesday, I got confirmation from a source in Ghana that the Omni ICE flight there last week was indeed a third-country removal – this time of 19 individuals, up from 14 on each of the three previous removal flights. I haven't been able to confirm if Journey Aviation's ICE flight to Liberia last week was a third-country removal, and I haven't seen any other reporting on it.
This week, Journey did two ICE flights to Ghana and Kenya. Both are likely third-country removals*, though it is unclear if the final destination for the migrants on second flight was Rwanda, Uganda or somewhere else. As I previously reported, a third-country removal flight in April landed in Kenya, where the migrant onboard was transferred to an unidentified plane for the final leg to Rwanda.
I am unable to run down information on an increasing number of suspected third-country removals, and I have seen no reporting on them at other outlets. Third-country removals appear to be increasing just as media interest appears to be fading.
The Third-Country Removal Tracker has been updated with a new section explaining what each "host country" has received in exchange for human beings.
I'll have some reporting on Avelo's ICE flights publishing in the coming week (enshalla), so keep an eye out for that.
RECENT ICE FLIGHT HEADLINES
ICE Flight Monitor: October 2025 Report
Human Rights First recorded 199 removal flights and a record number of domestic shuffle flights in one month: 1,014. Domestic shuffles have skyrocketed in the last few months, as the report shows here:
As I wrote in Rolling Stone in August, immigration attorneys and advocates say ICE appears to be using frequent transfers to punish immigrants in detention, cut them off from their families and legal counsel, and wear them down so they'll sign "voluntary" removal papers.
COLLABORATORS: WHO HELPED ICE AIR THIS WEEK
Airlines: Avelo Airlines, Eastern Airlines/Eastern Air Express, GlobalX Airlines, Journey Aviation, Key Lime Air/Denver Air Connection, Omni Air International, the US Coast Guard.
Enforcement: Akima Global Services, GEO Group
Logistics & Servicing: CSI Aviation, GEO Group, Million Air Signature Aviation, Skyservice.
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