A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
The budget airline Avelo is set to start running deportation flights next month. Avelo signed a deal to transport detained migrants back to their home countries as part of President Trump's immigration crackdown. But as NPR's Joel Rose reports, the airline's deal is getting an angry reaction.
JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: A few years ago, Avelo Airlines got a warm welcome from travelers and politicians in Connecticut when the company brought nonstop flights and low fares to Tweed New Haven Airport. But it was a very different scene this month.
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UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: Boycott Avelo. Boycott Avelo.
ROSE: Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the airport after the company announced a deal to operate deportation flights for ICE. John Lugo is an activist from New Haven who helped organize the demonstration.
JOHN LUGO: It's outrageous. Like, a company that operates from New Haven, in one of the most welcoming cities for migrants, right now, they're going to be making profits, like, deporting people back to their countries.
ROSE: Facing financial headwinds, Avelo struck a long-term deal to work with U.S. immigration and customs enforcement. The company says three of its planes will begin operating charter flights for ICE based in Arizona starting May 12. They'll join the small fleet of ICE Air Operations carriers that try hard to keep out of the spotlight.
TOM CARTWRIGHT: There is no transparency, and that's by design.
ROSE: That is 71-year-old Tom Cartwright, a former banking executive turned volunteer activist. Cartwright started tracking ICE Air using public flight tracking data during the first Trump administration. Now he's become the go-to source for information about ICE flights. Every day, Cartwright says, between eight and 10 planes carry passengers in shackles and leg chains both inside the U.S. and on deportation flights around the globe. The system has worked roughly the same way under administrations of both parties. Cartwright says the airlines that operate these flights for ICE are subcontractors, usually private charter airlines that fly for many different clients.
CARTWRIGHT: They might fly an ICE flight today, and they might take somebody to the Masters Tournament tomorrow. That's just the way they operate.
ROSE: But Cartwright says Avelo is a different case. It's a regular retail airline that flies to dozens of cities and sells tickets directly to the public.
CARTWRIGHT: So it's quite different. And I think they underestimated the public outcry, to be honest, that might come from this.
ROSE: Avelo declined our interview request. In a statement, founder and CEO Andrew Levy said, quote, we knew this would be a "sensitive and complicated topic." He said the company is looking for financial stability from its long-term deal with the government. But the situation is getting even more complicated in Connecticut, where Avelo has a major hub and where Democratic elected leaders were already furious about the Trump administration's immigration crackdown.
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RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: To the president of Avelo, you really stepped in it.
(LAUGHTER)
BLUMENTHAL: You really - you made a bad mistake.
ROSE: That's Richard Blumenthal, the state's senior U.S. senator at a protest outside the New Haven Airport. And the state's attorney general, William Tong, has demanded to see Avelo's contract with ICE.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
WILLIAM TONG: The state of Connecticut should not support and should not be a partner to an airline that assists this administration in its unlawful and unconstitutional actions.
ROSE: If Avelo doesn't change course, Tong says state lawmakers should revoke the support they've given the airline, including a tax break on jet fuel that's set to expire this summer.
Joel Rose, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF JULIA KENT'S "ARLANDA") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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