Documenting Deportation Flights at MSP Airport
Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport, MN — “I was here yesterday recording video and they were laying shackles out on the icy tarmac. It was 15 degrees. Terrible,” said Nick Benson, a “very enthusiastic aviation geek” on December 3. He was speaking to a crowd near Signature Aviation’s hangar at a rally calling for an end to deportation flights from the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport (MSP).
“A convoy of DHS vans will arrive” and unload people before shackling and inspecting them and directing them “to hobble up the steps onto the aircraft,” he said.
Over the past several months, Benson, who goes by ottergoose on reddit, has been tracking, photographing, and posting his documentation of deportation flights online, including to reddit’s r/minnesota board.
“Speaking on behalf of Minnesota 50501,” Benson said he noticed two changes earlier this year — they started using a dummy callsign to avoid being tracked and “most of the deportation fleet had been added to the FAA’s privacy list, which hides them from trackers like Flight Aware and Flight Radar 24.” In a post on reddit he noted that certain “crowd-sourced sites like adsb.lol, which aren’t beholden to FAA privacy regulations” help provide a level of transparency.
GlobalX Air, Eastern Air Express, and Denver Air Connection were a few of the airlines that ICE was using for flights out of MSP, said Benson. Signature Aviation would provide services such as stairs, fuel and ramp space for the planes. Benson said that after he starting publicly posting photos, Signature Aviation then began to use trucks without their logo.
Today’s ICE Flight at MSP
byu/ottergoose inminnesota
Benson said the planes would usually stop in Omaha before heading down to Trump’s major deportation hub at Alexandria, Louisiana.
“ICE agents would disembark from the airplane and unload bags of shackles from the cargo hold … seeing the chains that would soon be confining my neighbors, binding their hands together at their waist and then down between their ankles.”
Nick Benson on documenting deportation flights at the MSP Airport
The rally organized by workers and faith leaders demanded an end to deportation flights at MSP and living wages and dignity for all airport workers.
Meanwhile, a new $15.5 million U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility is under construction at the St. Paul Downtown Airport.
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