The Ghost Flights: Deportation Flights Disappearing Thousands Arrested by ICEBy Brenda Norrell, Censored News, Feb. 6, 2026
The Ghost Flights.
We've been tracking the Ghost Flights, disappearing migrants, moms, asylum seekers, and others arrested in Minneapolis, who are quickly grabbed and taken away at a private terminal at Minneapolis international airport.
The charter airlines are making it harder to track them, but here's what we found: GlobalX, Eastern and Omni based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, have operated most of these, with Sun Country also operating some of the flights.
These secretive flights take those arrested to deportation hubs in isolated areas, where they are sent to prison, deported to other countries, or constantly shifted on flights. These secretive hubs are in Dade Collier in the Florida Everglades; Alexandria in central Louisiana; and Harlingen on the Texas border.
Those arrested are boarded shackled in chains from their wrists to their feet, and often denied water and food, and abused. While these secretive flights disappear people, their families desperately search for them.
The flights out of Mesa in the Phoenix area are deporting hundreds on each flight to Venezuela. A recent flight out of Mesa deported those arrested to Russia and Iran. The past flights show the men were immediately given draft notices for military service when they arrived in Russia. Protesters and political asylum seekers face worse.
As for the chartered airlines, the main contract is held by CSI in Albuquerque, who contracts out the other airlines.
Yesterday, a Ghost Flight landed in Guantanamo and then Haiti. These are moms, workers, asylum seekers, legal residents, and most are whisked away and denied due process. More than 2,000 have been deported from Minneapolis.
Other major hubs for deportation flights are El Paso, Miami, San Antonio, and Tacoma, Washington. The deportation flights are arriving in every region of the world, the Americas, Asia, and Africa.
These are the Ghost Flights.
(Below) Ghost Flight deportation flight on Thursday, from deportation hub in central Louisiana at Alexandria to Guantanamo and Haiti. Tracking on Twitter/X.
(Below) Ghost Flight in Minneapolis to disappear those arrested. Eastern Airlines doesn't want you to see this, and is trying to block flight tracking, but plane spotters have it anyway. Arrived Thursday at 2 p.m. at the secretive deportation hanger at the Minneapolis international airport, between Terminal 1 and 2, the deportation site is operated by Signature. Tracking on Facebook.
(Below) Five miles south of Seattle, King County Airport is one of the airports disappearing migrants. Today, La Resistencia reports volunteers who observe deportation flights informed us this morning that 27 people were boarded on a plane to be transferred and/or deported.
15 People came off the plane to be detained at Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma.
Top photo by Jaida Grey Eagle, Oglala Lakota, for NPR. Read more on the deportation flights and the photographer tracking them in Minneapolis:
Minneapolis Deportation Flights
https://www.npr.org/2026/02/06/nx-s1-5701432/minneapolis-ice-air-deportation-flights
Deportation flights to Guantanamo include Cubans and Asylum Seekers
The US transferred 22 Cuban migrants to its naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, despite a federal judge ruling that the administration exceeded its authority in holding migrants at the facility, according to a report on Tuesday.
The men, believed to be the first Cuban citizens sent to the base since January, arrived on Sunday via an ICE air charter from Louisiana, The New York Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
ICE has held about 730 men at Guantanamo, mostly from Latin American countries including El Salvador, Guatemala, and Venezuela, according to the report.
Deportees to Russia
Russian authorities have intensified military draft enforcement at airports, issuing summons to returning men, including those deported from the U.S., amid the Ukraine conflict.
Deportees from the U.S. often face immediate interrogations by the FSB, potential arrests, and conscription risks, with some reports suggesting pathways to imprisonment or frontline deployment.
Mother Jones: ICE Flights are Getting Longer and Crueler
Just before being put on board her deportation flight, Melissa Tran’s wrists and ankles were shackled to a chain around her waist. It had been more than 10 hours since she’d been given any food or water; for the last seven, she had been sitting on a bus on the tarmac.
There was no company name or logo on the Boeing 767, but she soon learned the airline was called Omni Air International.
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