The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is buying six Boeing 737 planes to use for deportation flights, increasing its efforts to remove people living in the country without legal status. The planes will be bought from Daedalus Aviation under a contract worth around $140 million, Washington Post reported citing two people familiar with the deal.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the DHS, confirmed the agreement through social media. The contract details were not yet available on federal procurement websites.
Bloomberg quoted McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at DHS as saying, “This new initiative will save $279 million in taxpayer dollars by allowing ICE to operate more effectively, including by using more efficient flight patterns. President Trump and Secretary Noem are committed to quickly and efficiently getting criminal illegal aliens OUT of our country.”
ICE Air Operations, which is the main transport wing of the agency, currently uses a combination of rented planes and commercial flights. It operates 12 aircraft from hubs in Arizona, Texas, Louisiana and Florida to move detainees between detention centers and to carry out deportations abroad. DHS says the new planes will let ICE run more flights on its own instead of hiring others, which will help reduce costs, according to the report.
ICE Air has been known for operating with little public transparency and there is limited information about its routes, spending, and the conditions migrants face during transfers.
Why Boeing 737s are suitable
Boeing 737s are commonly used for domestic and short- to medium-distance international travel.
They can usually carry up to 200 passengers, depending on the model. They can fly nonstop to places in Central America, the Caribbean, parts of South America, and to major hubs across the US.
Immigration raids intensify
This year, the US government has increased immigration raids across the country in an effort to reach its target of one million deportations. Human Rights Watch says that since Trump took office in January, there have been more than 1,700 deportation flights to 77 countries, mostly sending migrants to Latin America and the Caribbean, as per the Bloomberg report.
Between January and the end of October, ICE Air also operated more than 6,300 domestic flights to move migrants between different US jails. That figure is more than double the number of internal transfers during a similar timeframe under the Biden administration, according to Human Rights Watch.
The purchase of the new aircraft is part of a larger enforcement plan supported by the administration’s budget increase of more than $150 billion over the next ten years, which will go toward expanding detention, transportation, staffing and border operations.