Trump appears to be getting back into the airline business, though this time, with a different kind of “Trump Shuttle.”
ICE acquiring its own fleet of planes for deportations
For years, the United States has contracted out to airlines for operating deportation flights. Airlines currently performing these flights include Avelo Air, Eastern Air Express, GlobalX Air, Omni Air International, and World Atlantic Airlines. This is a lucrative arrangement for those airlines, and also gives them a steady income stream.
The Trump administration is of course trying to greatly increase the number of deportations. Trump has vowed to deport one million undocumented immigrations per year, and in his first six months in office, ICE deported somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 undocumented immigrants, including voluntary self-departures.
This means that if Trump wants to reach that “goal,” the administration needs to greatly step up its number of deportations. Over the summer, we learned how Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was pushing for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to own and operate its own fleet of airplanes for deportations, with the goal of doubling the number of people that can be deported each month.
Well, this has now come to fruition, as reported by The Washington Post. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has agreed to buy six Boeing 737s at a cost of $140 million, in order to increase deportation efforts.
This contract is with Daedalus Aviation, a Virgin company with executives who are also associated with Salus Worldwide Solutions, a company that has a nearly $1 billion contract with DHS to support voluntary “self-deportation” efforts.
A DHS spokesperson said the following regarding these plans for ICE to acquire its own planes:
“We are delighted to see the media is highlighting the Trump administration’s cost-effective and innovative ways of delivering on the American people’s mandate for mass deportations of criminal illegal aliens. This new initiative will save $279 million in taxpayer dollars by allowing ICE to operate more effectively, including by using more efficient flight patterns. President Trump and Secretary Noem are committed to quickly and efficiently getting criminal illegal aliens OUT of our country.”
Currently, ICE charters 8-14 planes at a time for deportation flights, which allows for roughly 15,000 deportations per month. So by acquiring planes, ICE will be able to increase the number of people that it deports. As ICE increases the number of people it detains, more deportation flights are needed to avoid overcrowding in detention centers.
Of course buying aircraft requires a big investment, though Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” greatly increased funding for ICE. The bill gave ICE over $75 billion in funding, including $30 billion for deportation efforts, greatly increasing the previous $9.5 billion annual budget.
It’s suggested that the average deportation flight costs around $25,000 per hour, including the cost of the plane, pilots, flight attendants, security personnel, and medical personnel. So the average deportation trip cost is somewhere around $100,000 to $200,000.
Is there merit to the government starting this “airline?”
There’s no point in debating Trump’s deportation efforts, because we all have our own (typically strong) opinions on that, and I don’t think anyone is going to have their opinions changed in the comments section. So let’s stick to the aviation angle.
With that in mind, if the government is going to deport people, is it more beneficial to outsource the flying, or for the government to actually get into the “airline” business? A few thoughts…
First, is the bottleneck in deportation efforts really a lack of available aircraft that can be contracted? I’m kind of surprised to hear that, since you’d think that carriers like Avelo Air have a bit of spare capacity. For that matter, this just about seems like Spirit Airlines’ best bet at improving margins. I just struggle to imagine that the government is unable to contract more planes, given what a tough industry it is.
Second, I really question whether there’s added efficiency for the government operating aircraft directly. Airlines are generally pretty efficient businesses, and it’s not like the margins they’re skimming on these charters are huge. I have to imagine that if the government gets involved, there’s some loss in efficiency.
For that matter, by using charter operators, it’s easy enough to adjust capacity over time, to reflect demand, which is much harder to do if you actually buy planes. If we’re to believe that the undocumented immigration situation will change materially, and if our “borders are now closed,” then presumably at some point there would also be a decrease in the number of people who the government needs to deport?
Lastly, it’s worth noting that this isn’t the first “airline” that the US government is operating. The Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System (JPATS) is a United States Marshals Service airline that transports prisoners to and from various facilities within the United States. Oklahoma City Airport (OKC) even has a special terminal for prisoners.
Bottom line
The Trump administration has now signed a contract to bring deportation flights in-house, by acquiring aircraft in order to ramp up deportation efforts. Currently, the government charters planes from airlines, but with increased funding for ICE, the plan is for the government to also fly its own planes. Specifically, we’ve seen a $140 million deal signed, for the government to acquire six Boeing 737s.
I’m not sure I really see huge efficiency gains here, since I question how much cheaper the government could run this operation. If this is really about not being able to get enough planes chartered from airlines, well, then I’d be a bit surprised. The claim is that this will save taxpayers $279 million, though I’d love to see a breakdown of that math…
What do you make of the ICE Air concept?