The Department of Homeland Security’s network of detainee charter flights is colloquially known as “ICE Air” and is featured in a recent documentary “ICE Air” on YouTube.

ICE Air operates with an immense budget and minimal transparency. The DHS 2027 budget request is for $118.4 billion including $10 billion for ICE and  $17.4 billion for CBP “operations and support” and will completely eliminate the $10 million Citizenship and Assimilation Grant Program that provides programmatic support to local organizations like La Casa Hogar and Nuestra Casa. Eliminating 0.000084% of the overall DHS budget purports to ease the “burden on taxpaying US citizens.” DHS Budget at p.41.

When Trump was first elected in 2018, a group of volunteers formed the Yakima Immigrant Response Network (YIRN) to support community members being targeted by Trump and MAGA’s scapegoating and dehumanization. At the time, ICE flights operated through King County International Airport aka Boeing Field, ferrying shackled and handcuffed detainees in and out of the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma.  Read the ProPublica article – “At Seattle’s Boeing Field, Real-Time Video Offers a Rare Glimpse of America’s Troubled Deportation Flights”.

In 2019, under community pressure, King County Executive Dow Constantine issued an executive order to end the use of public airport facilities for detainee transfers and DHS sued. The court issued a temporary order halting the practice in King County that was lifted by the Ninth Circuit’s appellate decision in DHS’s favor, filed November 29, 2024. Meanwhile, DHS moved ICE Air activity to Yakima, where community efforts to convince the city council to pause ICE flights were less successful.

YIRN stepped up. To our knowledge, YIRN was the first volunteer group in the nation to track and observe ICE flights at public airports. Volunteers tracked flight numbers, witnessed each ICE flight serviced by Yakima’s fixed based operator (FBO) McCormick Air, counted and recorded the numbers of detainees getting on and off the planes, and shared data with the UW Center for Human Rights, the ACLU and other organizations.

YIRN worked with the city airport manager to ensure safety and volunteer access, although official cooperation varied with personnel changes.

According to YIRN’s records, our volunteers observed 9,844 people transferred through Yakima’s FBO on 208 flights from May 2019 through July 2023. ICE continues to occasionally divert detainee flights through Yakima when the King County airport closes, for example during the World Cup.

A Detainee’s Personal Story

One of the detainees we observed reached out to us after he’d been deported,  to try to figure out who was at the Yakima Airport when he was transferred to the border.  Here is the story of Mexican-British Journalist Pablo Allison in a Yakima Herald-Republic article – “Deported through Yakima: Inside the U.S. immigration system“. He also told his story in this PBS News segment.  The Detainee Handbook he wrote is currently out of print.

Flights Move Back to Seattle

With King County’s official cooperation, La Resistencia currently monitors King County flights to provide counts and witness the treatment of detainees. Watch the PBS news report and a recent article in TheDaily.  At the King County Airport, you can now watch the livestream of ICE Air transfers. The flight statistics are also made available to the public.

ICE Air’s randomness and lack of transparency continue to impact the Yakima community. Over a recent 2-day period, ICE moved 22 of our newly detained community members out of Tacoma to detention facilities in Arizona, Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana for reasons unknown. Total numbers of transferees are unknown, as ICE refuses to share this information. YIRN finds out a detainee has left Tacoma when the ICE Detainee Locator returns zero search results. It can be several days before family members know whether their loved one was moved, sitting shackled on an airplane, or deported. The transfer to other facilities prevents family members from visiting their loved one, and makes it impossible for their attorney to meet with them in Tacoma.

YIRN is committed to helping detained community members stay in contact with family and to hold our government accountable for the inhumane treatment of people swept up in Trump’s insanely expensive and destabilizing purge. Our efforts evolve with community needs. YIRN’s ultimate goal is for responsible and ethical public servants to put us out of business. Until that happens, YIRN will continue to support the immigrant community in Yakima County.

See the YIRN website for volunteer opportunities. Your donation directly helps impacted local families.