(AFP) – The surge of immigration detention flights at Minneapolis-Saint Paul airport spurred plane spotter Nick Benson to shift from tracking rare and unusual aircraft to cataloging the removal of detainees from Minnesota. Through a telephoto lens fixed to a tripod set up on a frozen, wind-swept corner of an airport carpark, Benson watched shackled detainees being loaded onto a flight chartered by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“It’s a charter flight operated by Global Crossing Airlines on behalf of what we would call ‘ICE air,'” he said. “It’s the network of airplanes and airlines that are moving deportees around in the United States, from cities all across the United States to detention facilities.” In January so far, there have been 39 flights that have taken 2,282 migrants out of Minnesota according to Benson’s count, with multiple daily flights at the height of the Trump administration’s surge of immigration arrests in Minnesota this month. By contrast, in January 2025, there was just one such flight a day.
Benson, a jolly, plaid-wearing Midwesterner brimming with enthusiasm for planes, said he was spurred to action by what he described as the cruelty of US President Donald Trump’s deportation agenda. He said he had witnessed elderly detainees who needed assistance climbing the stairs to the aircraft, as well as one individual who was still wearing their Amazon work uniform. “That doesn’t make any sense,” he said as he tracked the loading of an aircraft with 40 detainees Wednesday. He logs each removal flight, updating a database and sharing his findings with campaign group the 50501 Movement. “This is the only source of real-time information on how many people are actually leaving Minnesota right now,” he said as the state is in the grip of unprecedented sweeps to arrest undocumented people.
Nationwide, ICE operates thousands of such flights a year, both to move detainees around the United States like with Wednesday’s charter, as well as deporting people to other countries — sometimes nations other than their own. From January 20 to December 31, 2025, there were 13,446 immigration enforcement flights, of which 2,138 were deportation flights, ICE Flight Monitor reported. Benson, an aviation data analytics professional, said tracking the flights had been complicated by the Department of Homeland Security, which charters aircraft from private companies, having flight data withheld from the public. “It’s the same mechanism that, like Taylor Swift and Elon Musk use to maintain privacy. It’s unusual,” he said.
Benson, 41, said the vast majority of flights have been destined for El Paso in Texas on the southern border with Mexico. El Paso is home to the vast Camp East Montana detention center, a makeshift tent facility that has been beset by claims of substandard conditions and at least three migrant deaths since it opened in August. The Department of Homeland Security said only “for operational security, ICE does not release information concerning deportation flight schedules.” The airport did not respond to a request for comment.
Previously, the department at the forefront of executing Trump’s deportation drive has defended the flights as necessary to remove undocumented immigrants guilty of crimes that make them the “worst of the worst.” Minneapolis airport was the scene of a tense protest last week by religious leaders demonstrating against the operation of ICE flights from the facility, with organizers reporting that around 100 clergy had been arrested. “ICE has even been arresting airport workers while they are on the job,” said one of those who protested, Reverend Mariah Furness Tollgaard of Hamline Church United Methodist. “What this administration and ICE are doing in Minnesota is not abstract policy — it is shattering families, traumatizing children, and spreading fear through our neighborhoods.”
– Gregory WALTON
© 2024 AFP
