Hidden in plain sight: Richmond International Airport is ICE deportation flight hub, according to human rights organization

Hidden in plain sight, behind the Richmond Jet Center and less than a mile from the Richmond International Airport terminal, throngs of shackled people have been loaded onto airplanes with no attributed owner about 80 separate times so far this year, according to a human rights organization and Citizen observations.

Human Rights First reports that those people then have in many cases been flown (either directly or indirectly) to the country’s largest U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement hub in Alexandria, Louisiana, where more than 1,000 deportation flights from cities throughout the U.S. have landed since January.

These are not flights that RIC passengers on Delta, American Airlines or Southwest routes will see listed on the arrival or departure screens in the main terminal. These passengers never enter the terminal’s doors, since Richmond Jet Center (the fixed-base operator facilitating the flights) operates as a private terminal.

But the deportation domestic transfer – or “shuffle” – flights, which facilitate movement of ICE-detainees between a growing network of domestic immigration detention centers, share the runway with the other commercial jets.

The HRF's recently released document “ICE Flight Monitor August 2025 Monthly Report” puts RIC among the top airports this year for such "shuffles." Through August, according to the report, RIC had witnessed 72 inbound ICE flights, ranking it 16th in the nation between Dallas, Texas (with 75 flights) and Las Vegas, Nevada (71).

Once they land, those flights pick up their passengers and fly either to another domestic airport to do the same thing or to a final U.S. destination (often Alexandria, Louisiana) to drop those passengers off.

Determining who the passengers on these types of ICE flights are, where they were detained and what evidence exists to demonstrate their illegal presence in the U.S. has proven difficult for a number of media outlets nationwide.

But there are many more of the flights this year than there were in 2024.

From Jan. 20 to Aug. 31, the HRF report shows there were a total of 4,422 domestic transfer flights in the U.S. – up dramatically from the 2,507 such flights during the same period in 2024.

This August alone, through open-source flight tracking platforms, ICE Flight Monitor tracked 805 shuffle flights across the country.

Human rights concerns

Besides the lack of awareness that unobserved deportation flights are occurring in communities such as Henrico, the HRF flags these flights as methods for the Trump administration to achieve mass deportations by means of expedited removal – including potentially terminating protected legal status, disappearing people without due process including transferring people to high security prisons in El Salvador and forcibly transferring people to other countries of which they are not citizens.

“These actions, many of which have been determined to be unlawful by federal courts, have been carried out with little to no transparency, while thousands of people’s lives are uprooted from communities across the country and their rights are systematically violated,” according to the HRF report.

The organization also raised concerns about the conditions in which people on immigration enforcement flights typically are handled, reporting that they “are generally restrained by handcuffs, waist chains and leg irons, including during any layovers and fuel stops.”

Some, it reported, have been shackled for as long as 30 hours on multi-country flights.

Additionally, numerous national media outlets along with the American Immigration Council reported $14.4 billion is being spent on ICE arrests, detention and deportation flights, and the recently passed H.R. 1 law dramatically increased ICE’s total annual budget from $9.9 billion in 2024 to $28.7 billion.

For many groups, that number is a concern.

Shackled people loaded onto 2 separate flights Sept. 17

Last week, before an unmarked, 55-seat, white EMBRAER EMB-145XR airplane with blue tail stripes and N974DC marking touched down at 11:22 a.m. on Wednesday morning on the Richmond International Airport tarmac, its route was shown on the app FlightAware as it left the Alexandria, Louisiana airport, with the unknown identifier TYSON59.

The city located three-and-a-half hours northwest of New Orleans with a population of 43,000 doesn’t show up on terminal screens; its draw is that it is an ICE deportation flight hub.

Investigations in publications such as the The New York Times show that the name more commonly associated with a chicken producer is being used by ICE and its contractor airlines to conceal deportation flights from public logs. Simple Flying reported the many airlines contracted by ICE are flying under false, so-called “dummy” call signs to avoid being tracked by watchdog civil rights groups and members of the American public.

By the time the plane pulled up to the private Richmond Jet Center terminal on that drizzly morning Sept. 17, three unmarked white vans with darkened windows awaited it.

As observed from outside fencing topped with concertina wire surrounding the FBO area, shackled men dressed in street clothes emerged one by one from the vans to walk up the airplane steps, being frisked on the way by people in dark and fluorescent unidentified uniforms, with no clear law enforcement markings.

As this process continued, another larger airplane arrived with the Eastern airline’s logo on its side and orange and blue swirling design on its tail. The taller and longer Boeing 777-200ER, accommodates 379 economy seats and is billed on the airline's website as being built for long-haul passenger flights.

Handlers and people who appeared to be guards dropped a collection of backpacks and red plastic bags on the tarmac with what might have been the belongings of the shackled men. Those bags then were loaded into the back of the EMBRAER airplane.

Once all the shackled passengers were loaded onto the plane from the vans, a man entered the plane, emerging minutes later with shackles that hung to the ground, which he threw inside one of the vans with finality.

Once full and loaded, the crew closed the door of the smaller plane and taxied to the runway for takeoff at 12:13 p.m. into the clouds in as perfunctory a way as it arrived.

A white bus and multiple vans then neared the Eastern Boeing 777-200ER airplane then ready on the tarmac for its shackled passengers to board, repeating the process of sending shackled men from the vehicles to the plane with a pause for frisking. Delta, American Airlines and Southwest planes, as well as smaller planes, landed and took off at the airport during this process.

Again, crew dropped red plastic bags of belongings on the ground toward the rear of the plane and then loaded them as a fuel truck serviced the aircraft. Rain drizzled down. The men wearing street clothes continued to board in shackles.

Again, as the vehicles emptied and the plane filled, the red bags were loaded, and the mundane procedures of takeoff took place. A staffer wearing fluorescent clothing stood in front of the plane to wave it onto the runway as the Eastern airplane waited its turn on the runway.

At 1:12 pm, the Eastern airlines flight ascended, following an an American Airlines flight, disappearing into the clouds in the southwest direction as the rain continued to drizzle.

FlightAware again captured the route of the previous flight of the EMBRAER EMB-145XR airplane with blue tail stripes and N974DC marking, which landed in Alexandria, Louisiana not long after the Eastern plane took off.

'We don’t give information out'

Verifying if the scene was in fact a deportation “shuffle” flight proved challenging, as a special security classification was granted to ICE by the Trump administration. Though ICE did not respond by publication time to an email and Freedom of Information Act request from the Citizen seeking clarification about the scene at RIC or the numbers cited in the HRF report, it was still well within its legal 20-day window of time during which it may do so.

The receptionist at the Richmond Jet Center would not explain if the shackled men boarded onto flights on the tarmac in front of the location minutes earlier were part of an ICE deportation flight, either.

“Most of these are private and corporate jets, and these larger ones are private also. We don't give that information out,” the receptionist said.

When asked if the Richmond Jet Center records flights and could provide a record of flights directly or through the airport log, the receptionist said, “We don’t have to record anything.” Reporting movement, she said, was up to the carrier.

An RIC spokesperson also said he did not have knowledge or information about ICE deportation flights, although he said he was familiar with the The New York Times report naming Richmond as an airport from which ICE deportation flight originate.

Varina District Supervisor Tyrone Nelson (whose district includes the airport) and Fairfield District Supervisor Roscoe Cooper, III – both of whom are members of the Capital Region Airport Commission – told the Citizen Sept. 25 that they were not aware of ICE flights at RIC.

“I didn't know it was happening," said Nelson, who serves as vice chair of the commission. "I need to learn more. I mean, it sucks. I don't like ICE, and I don't like these whole mass deportation efforts for political clout. I'll find out more.”

Contractor hiring transportation officers to move detainees

Vehicles and uniforms used on the tarmac point to the GEO Group, a private corrections contractor benefiting from the ICE expansion. A search into government contracts, other investigations and the GEO Group’s Richmond job listing descriptions matched the actions viewed Sept. 17.

The GEO Group is looking to hire Richmond-based transportation officers who “securely transport federal detainees between destinations in high-risk operations and high-profile federal government transportation contracts.”

The GEO Group also has job openings for flight security officers, based in Alexandria, Louisiana to perform activities seen in front of the Richmond Jet Center Sept. 17 – specifically, to load and unload people onto and off of aircraft and search the passengers. People in these roles also apply restraints and remove them as applicable.

An email response from Christopher V. Ferreira, the GEO Group’s director of corporate relations did not answer any questions posed about the company's activities at RIC – and specifically those seen Sept. 17 – and deferred questions to ICE.

An Aug. 14 report by CNN on the rise of ICE flights and the challenges of tracking them recorded similar scenes of shackled men boarding planes at the Richmond Jet Center. The reporter said the blocked tail numbers makes it impossible for families to track the detainees who might spend hours shackled.

HRF deportation flights data logged between 2020 and 2025 puts RIC in the top 20 spot of domestic departure cities, with a total of 326 ICE outbound flights. That means the number of flights tracked in 2025 compose about 25% of the total deportation flights from the airport during that time.

The HRF report concluded that in total this year through August, there had been been more than 7,700 removal, removal-related or domestic shuffle immigration enforcement flights.

The most recent ICE Air Flights tracking report by the Witness At The Border group, which bears witness to “the consequences of policies which inhibit the right of people to migrate,” documented a total of 1,214 ICE deportation flights in July 2025, with 727 being domestic shuffle flights, like the ones that flew out of RIC Sept. 17.

The report described domestic ICE air contracts with the airline broker CSI Aviation, which it said in turn subcontracts the flights to GlobalX, Eastern Air Express, Avelo Airlines, World Atlantic (Caribbean Sun), Eastern Air, OMNI Air, and Kaiser. Historically, and currently, the vast majority of the flights are operated by GlobalX, Eastern Air Express and Avelo, the report said.

International deportation flights have another set of organization and carriers.

Witness At The Border’s information is based upon securing all flight information from the publicly available FlightAware application, FlightRadar24, AirNav, and the ADB-S tracking system. Monitors then filter the flights to the likely ICE Air removal and destination locations to identify the removal flights.

The Alexandria, Louisiana airport’s activity has increased 60%, according to FlightAware. The app’s data demonstrates the role that the airport apparently plays on any given day in receiving ICE deportation “shuffle flights” from throughout the country and then deportation flights bound for destinations abroad.

While RIC’s activity has increased 10% overall in 2025, per FlightAware’s statistics, the ICE deportation flights may not be included in those statistics.

ICE arrests to date this year in Virginia nearly triple last year's total

But deportation flights originating from RIC have been public knowledge for several months.

A July, investigative report produced by The New York Times explained “How Louisiana Became ICE Detention Central,” through which journalists tracked flights from around the country to the small community described as the top ICE transit hub for deportations in the country.

The video report called out RIC as a deportation flight destination.

No other Virginia airport is listed in the HRF report, and the two North Carolina airports listed received only a combined total of 10 inbound ICE flights through August this year, leading to the understanding that RIC is a hub to ship off detained people from area detention centers.

Immigrant Justice’s online publication “Exposing ICE Detention Contracts and Inspections Transparency Project” lists 96 ICE detention centers nation-wide that sometimes use space in government-run local or state facilities.

Six detention centers in Virginia, with locations throughout the state (including sites where ICE has contracts), include the Caroline Detention Facility, Hampton Roads, Immigration Centers of America Farmville, Northwestern Regional Juvenile Detention Center, Rappahannock Regional Jail and Virginia Peninsula Regional Jail.

In North Carolina, ICE has a detention contract at Henderson County.

ICE agents made 4,264 arrests in Virginia during the first seven months of the year, nearly three times the number for the entire previous year, according to an analysis of federal court records compiled by VPM, but most of those detainees did not have criminal records.

Other recent reporting cites the removal of dozens of immigration judges, raising concerns for some about the right to due process for those who are detained.

To watch an ICE deportation flight at RIC raises numerous questions of accountability about what just occurred and who was involved.

But as the Eastern Airlines flight departed RIC Sept. 17 in view of the airport administration building and the private terminals, disappearing into the clouds, few people were there to witness it.

Dina Weinstein is the Citizen’s community vitality reporter and a Report for America corps member, covering housing, health and transportation. Support her work and articles like this one by making a contribution to the Citizen.