It was a day like any other. An airport, people boarding a plane that rose into the sky. But this was no ordinary flight. It was a deportation flight, organized by Avelo Airlines, a budget carrier that had previously served only small U.S. cities. But now, it was no longer tourists filling the seats. It was migrants. Men, women, some with empty stares, others full of fear.
In April 2025, Avelo signed a contract with the Department of Homeland Security to conduct deportation flights from Mesa Gateway Airport in Arizona. Three Boeing 737-800 aircraft, fully loaded with people who had done nothing more than having the misfortune of falling into the clutches of the system.
The announcement sparked protests. A petition to boycott the airline circulated, and the cabin crew itself, represented by the flight attendants' union, warned of the dangers of such flights. “An entire flight of people in handcuffs and shackles would hinder any evacuation in an emergency and endanger the safety of everyone on board,” the union declared.
Andrew Levy, Avelo's CEO, saw no people in this. He saw numbers, contracts, revenue. An opportunity. The chance to profit from the greed of others. People torn from their lives became cargo to him, a business opportunity.
Avelo was not the first airline to discover the business of deportations. But the others stayed in the shadows. Global charter companies like GlobalX and Eastern Air Express had long done the dirty work. They transported migrants to countries they had never seen before, without publicity, without outrage.
But Avelo was different. A budget airline that had once flown vacationers and families now joined the ranks of the deportation industry. And the outrage was inevitable.
“For a company that calls itself 'New Haven’s hometown airline,' this decision is a slap in the face of our values,” declared New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker. And outside the airport in Mesa, protesters gathered. They held signs, cursed Trump and his deportation policy, cursed Avelo.
But the planes kept taking off. Mesa Gateway Airport became one of five hubs for ICE Air, the government’s air transport operation for deportations. Thousands of flights per year, thousands of people loaded like cargo onto planes.
At a time when other airlines refused to make their hotels available for detained migrants - when brands like Marriott and Hilton opposed such use - Avelo chose to profit from the desperate. And the price? It remained secret. Neither Avelo nor the Department of Homeland Security provided details on the financial terms.
John Jairo Lugo of Unidad Latina en Acción in New Haven put it bluntly: “We have to cause economic damage to the airline to convince them that they should be on the side of the people, not on the side of the government.” But for Avelo, it was just another business opportunity.
One flight. Another. People whose faces disappeared behind the windows. People who would never return. For some, it was a journey into darkness. For others, a business. And for Avelo, just another day.
English 
German 
