“ICE Air” Flight Attendants Share Deportation Flight Frustration

As we all know, the Trump administration has operated hundreds of deportation flights in the past couple of months, to destinations like Colombia, Guatemala, and Honduras. 85% of these flights have been operated by charter airlines, with GlobalX having the biggest government contract.

Outlet ProPublica has just published a story about the reality of what flight attendants on these flights are dealing with, and I think it provides some fascinating insights (thanks to @xJonNYC for flagging this).

I’m not trying to debate the ethics or legality of these deportation flights (there are other venues for that), but rather, I think it’s interesting to learn about the reality of the situation from those working these flights. I’m sure I’m not the only one who was curious how this works.

GlobalX flight attendants are miserable, feel misled

GlobalX is a US charter carrier. While the airline was initially hoping to largely transport sports teams and the like, GlobalX’s biggest business has become government contracts, in particular, for deportation flights. So most of these are “ICE Air” flights, as they’re commonly referred to (with “ICE” being the acronym for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement).

Seven different current and former GlobalX flight attendants spoke to ProPublica about their experience working for the airline, and there are some interesting details.

To start, when the flight attendants applied to work at GlobalX, they describe it as a startup that had big plans, and flight attendants were reportedly sold on the concept of working flights with VIP clients, like musicians and sports teams, and flying to fun destinations, particularly in the Caribbean. An ad from the company stated that “you can’t beat the eXperience.” As a flight attendant explains:

“In the beginning, we were told that because it’s a charter, it’s only gonna be elites, celebrities. Everybody was really excited.”

However, flight attendants then found the reality of their jobs to be quite different. The company reportedly informed employees of this in a nonchalant way, telling them that the company secured a government charter contract.

But then they quickly found that they’d be working deportation flights five days per week. These flights generally have 100+ detainees, more than a dozen private security guards, a single ICE officer, and two nurses. A disgruntled employee reportedly sent an email to the entire company in 2024, expressing shock at the direction:

“WHERE IS THE COMPANY GOING? YOU SIGNED A 5 YEAR CONTRACT WITH ICE? … WHAT HAPPENED TO THIS BECOMING A PRESTIGE CHARTER AIRLINE?”

So, what’s the experience of working these flights like?

• Flight attendants are instructed not to interact with the detainees, and not to even acknowledge their existence, or mutter a word; they can’t even walk down the aisle without a security guard
• The extent of the functions that the flight attendants perform is that they arm and disarm the doors, and do a safety demonstration at the beginning of the flight in English
• During the flight, flight attendants are just supposed to sit in passenger seats (not near the aisle, so they don’t get grabbed), look out the window, and do nothing
• Flight attendants report getting in trouble for telling the guards what to do, like asking them to fasten their seatbelts before landing; one guard reportedly filed a complaint against a flight attendant for that, and then the company sent an email asking something like “why are you guys causing problems?”

Flight attendants don’t know how to evacuate deportation flights

The single biggest complaint that GlobalX flight attendants have with these flights involves safety. Flight attendants are primarily there for passenger safety, yet GlobalX flight attendants haven’t received training regarding how they’re supposed to evacuate passengers who are chained, in the event of an emergency. They haven’t received this from the ICE Air handbook, FAA regulations, or from their own training.

Passengers who are chained aren’t considered to be “able-bodied,” and aren’t even allowed to sit in exit rows. So how are flight attendants supposed to evacuate a plane in line with the FAA’s 90-second rule? As three different GlobalX flight attendants describe this:

• “They never taught us anything regarding the immigration flights. They didn’t tell us these people were going to be shackled, wrists to f*cking ankles.”
• “We have never gotten a clear answer on what we do in an ICE Air evacuation. They will not give us an answer.”
• “It’s only a matter of time.”

This isn’t just a theoretical issue. Between 2014 and 2019, deportation flights had at least six accidents or incidents that required evacuation. In at least two of those incidents, untrained guards led the evacuation, rather than flight attendants.

In one of the cases, it took seven minutes for the shackled detainees to evacuate the smoke-filled jet. An ICE officer on that flight wrote that they were “confused on what to do and in which direction to exit during distress,” and noted that other than the flight crew, “no one has received any training on emergency evacuation situations.” That apparently hasn’t changed.

Bottom line

I’ve known that GlobalX operates most of the government’s deportation flights. However, I was long curious what it was like for flight attendants, so this story provides some really interesting insights.

Long story short, GlobalX flight attendants sound like they’re miserable. They’re working flights where they’re not even allowed to acknowledge passengers, and they also have safety concerns, since they don’t know how they’d evacuate a plane in an emergency.

I suspect the reality of these flights is something that the government would prefer to sweep under the rug. But it sure seems like there are some problematic details here…

What do you make of this story about GlobalX flight attendants?