President Joe Biden officially renewed deportations to Venezuela for the first time in years, with more than 100 Venezuelans being deported back on a flight chartered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on October 18. The deportations follow high level negotiations between the two countries, which also resulted in the United States decreasing sanctions against the South American country and an opening for free elections.
According to the Biden Administration, the flight is the first of multiple flights per week headed to the South American country. The announcement comes months after the United States renewed deportations to Cuba.
Jeff Abbott
Some deportees who were returned to Guatemala on an ICE-chartered flight in June 2022 also arrived without any shoelaces.
The images of the deportation of Venezuelans with their hands and legs shackled—as if they were criminals—their lack of shoelaces, and the despair on their faces, is repeated daily. Each day, ICE-chartered deportation flights leave airports across the United States to return migrants to dangerous situations across the hemisphere.
According to Tom Cartwright, who tracks deportation flights with Witness At the Border, between 15 to 25 percent of all migrants encountered by Customs and Border Protection (CPB) agents are deported. “Deportation is a cornerstone of the United States’ immigration policy,” Cartwright tells The Progressive. “It injects a risk [for migrants] of being sent back to their home country. Without that deterrent, [the U.S.] feels neutered”
According to Cartwright, as of September 2023, 1100 chartered deportation flights left the United States carrying thousands of migrants. Of those flights, 316 went to Guatemala, 279 to Honduras, and 136 to Ecuador.
According to a 2022 investigation carried out by the Center for Human Rights at the University of Washington, the majority of deportation flights operated under a secret contract between ICE and a broker named Classic Air Charter (CAC), prior to the end of this contract on June 30. In July, a temporary contract for $148.6 million was awarded to the Texas-based CSI Aviation, with the possibility of an extension until March 2024, at which point it would pay them a total of $407.2 million.
Jeff Abbott
A ICE-chartered Swift Air flight unloads deportees in Guatemala City in February 2020.
In turn, CSI contracts out other private charter airlines such as iAero Airways ( formerly Swiftair), World Atlantic Airlines, Global X, and occasionally Omni airlines, along with other smaller companies. These flights, which are often used by traveling sports teams, are estimated to cost around $7,800 dollars per hour to operate.
The chartered deportation flight operators have also been accused of numerous human rights violations.
According to the same Center for Human Rights investigation, these flights have resulted in violations of the principle of non-refoulement, or as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights states, “no one should be returned to a country where they would face torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and other irreparable harm. This principle applies to all migrants at all times.” The report details multiple examples of migrants facing torture and dehumanization by both ICE agents and hired contractors on the flights.
The chartered deportation flight operators have also been accused of numerous human rights violations.
The company iAero is the largest of the contracted airlines. They have greatly expanded in recent years with investment from the Blackstone group, a hedge fund whose CEO, Steve Schwarzman, is a known Republican mega-donor.
Deportations are a bipartisan issue, with both Republicans and Democrats defaulting to returning migrants to dangerous situations.
“Without the deterrent weapon of deportation, the United States would not be able to deter the number of Venezuelans crossing the U.S.-Mexico border,” Cartwright says. “But in the short term it won’t be a deterrent.”
More than seven million Venezuelans were forced to flee their homes following years of increasing economic crisis, in part worsened by international sanctions, and general political instability brought about by the regime of President Nicolas Maduro.
Päivi & Santeri/Public domain
Jungle path in the Darién Gap on the Colombian side near Panamanian border.
While these migrants initially settled across South America, in recent years millions have sought to take the dangerous route north in the hopes of reaching the United States. In 2023 alone, it is estimated that more than 209,000 Venezuelans crossed through the jungles of the Daríén Gap, which separates Panama and Colombia, between January and August.
In 2023, the Biden Administration extended legal protections for Venezuelans under a federal Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program, but this status is only available to those who entered the country prior to July 31. The renewal of deportations is meant as a warning to those who continue to seek safety in the United States—saying that if one enters illegally, they will be sent back to the despair that they left.
Deportations to Venezuela had been suspended since 2019 by the Department of Transportation. But this did not stop the Trump Administration from illegally deporting an unknown number of Venezuelan migrants back through Colombia in 2020. At the time, Democrats responded to the deportations with condemnation, with then presidential candidate Biden stating, “It’s abundantly clear [that Trump] has no regard for the suffering of the Venezuelan people.”
“The U.S. government must be consistent . . . and immediately cease all deportation flights.”—Ana Piquer
The renewal of deportations has been met by concern from human and immigrant rights groups.
“The U.S. government must be consistent with its condemnation of human rights violations in the country…and immediately cease all deportation flights and forced returns of Venezuelans to their country,” Ana Piquer, the Americas director at Amnesty International, said in a press release calling for a ban on these forced returns.