Independent journalist Gillian Brockell and activist “JJ in DC” take you inside the hidden world of ICE Air, tell you why it is such a key part of ICE’s deportation machine, and what you can do about it.
In episode 1, JJ from DC gives a shoutout to the contributions of unnamed members of the De-ICE Hanscom team.
We are asking state pension fund officials to engage their investment managers and demand answers. Signature refused to service ICE flights at Boeing Field in 2019 — documented in sworn federal testimony — and faced no legal consequences. The company’s claim that it has no choice is contradicted by its own past conduct. Pension trustees have a fiduciary duty to ask hard questions when a portfolio holding carries material reputational and ESG risk.
While news organizations have reported on some of these incidents aboard what the government calls ICE Air, key details about how the system works would still be hidden were it not for a group of researchers who are now part of the work inside the observation room.
At Seattle’s Boeing Field, Real-Time Video Offers a Rare Glimpse of America’s Troubled Deportation Flights
The number of human beings on deportation fights from Hanscom Field in 2025. These flights continue to this day.
A group of activists, including our own Lexington Alarm, have built a new online tool to track domestic ICE flights in real-time and predict their schedules. Called Habeas Flight Watch, it was designed to help the legal teams of detained migrants with habeas petitions and emergency motions, but activists and journalists have also begun using it to document ICE’s actions in their cities.
“By the Court’s count, the foregoing describes at least half a dozen ways in which ICE disregarded the standards the Constitution demands of a government agency responsible for the health and safety of a person it has chosen to detain. Considered altogether, this course of conduct demonstrates ICE’s deliberate indifference to Peruano’s health and safety, both generally and specifically as a result of her known and serious medical condition. ICE’s failure to comply with the constitutional obligations it assumed when it took Peruano into custody bears on the appropriate scope of relief and also warrants sanctions, as the Court will explain below.”
In the spirit of May Day’s “No Work, No School, No Shopping,” De-ICE Hanscom held a May Day Potluck Picnic before the standout on May 1. Instead of buying anything that day, we pooled what we already had to create a communal feast. The weather was beautiful and we enjoyed recharging our bodies and spirits with fellow activists.
What’s happening on the border is horrifying—and it’s happening here in Massachusetts too. Every week ICE arrests and detains more of our community members.
The Beyond Bond & Legal Defense Fund (the Bond Fund) raises money for immigration bonds to free people in ICE prisons in Massachusetts and Rhode Island or elsewhere, but are coming to live in MA upon release.
Since 2018, our community has raised over $1.5 million, to bond out hundreds of people, and helped with legal fees for many others. As people continued to be detained across our area and the country, we can—and must—do more.
Bonds can range anywhere from $2,000 to more than $20,000 per person. Our Bond Fund works with families and other bond funds across the country to get our people out of ICE prisons. Together we will continue to free people from immigration prison, reunite families, and keep our communities together in the face of white supremacist and xenophobic state violence.
The Bond Fund also supplements legal fees to help people get out of immigration prison and, from time to time, provides supplemental funds toward legal fees for representation of those freed from immigration prison in their asylum/relief proceedings.
Our Bond Fund envisions a day when we never pay another immigration bond because we have abolished ICE detention, ICE enforcement, prisons and jails and all people can migrate with freedom, safety and dignity.
It was a cold and bleak afternoon, but that didn’t deter about two dozen residents of Lincoln and neighboring towns who stood with protest signs to protest ICE prisoner flights from Hanscom Field on March 6 as they have done every Friday for the past several months.
Dear Mr. Lefebvre,
I am writing to request that you to immediately sever all ties with I CE and cease providing services that support ICE’s deportation flights out of Hanscom Field.