The Americans for Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, seeking information over its ICE Air program.
The ICE Air program utilizes commercial and charter flights to return immigrants to their countries of origin. It also transfers detained noncitizens domestically throughout the United States to various ICE-managed detention facilities and staging areas via charter aircraft.
In recent weeks, flights have been charted to Central America, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Mexico. Homeland Security officials say that there have been over 700,000 removals and returns this year, marking its highest number of deportations since 2010.
The ACLU said that ICE has failed to provide information through a Freedom of Information Act request on how ICE Air could be expanded to carry out a mass deportation and detention program.
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The ACLU said it requests ICE to provide documents pertaining to its contracts and records regarding air transportation to execute removals, documents containing information on what ground transportation is used to transfer noncitizens to airports, and documents showing the airfields ICE uses, or has access to, for removal.
The information request comes as President-elect Donald Trump vows to conduct the largest sweep of immigrants in U.S. history. Incoming Trump administration officials have said that deportations could include U.S. citizens, as they say children of undocumented immigrants could be included in sweeps.
“Little is known about how President-elect Trump would carry out its mass deportation agenda, but what we do know is that this proposal has already instilled fear among immigrant communities,” said Eva Bitran, director of immigrants’ rights at ACLU SoCal. “The public has a right to know how its taxpayer dollars could be used to fund deportation flights that would tear apart not only families, but also our communities.”
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The lawsuit is among many ways immigration advocates are preparing for a Trump presidency.
For instance, the National Immigrant Justice Center said it would fight limits placed by the Biden administration, as well as potentially limits issued by the Trump administration, on asylum seekers.
