Exclusive: Airline Flies Snowbirds to Mexico, Deports Immigrants for ICE

”Think beyond a flight. Charter an experience,” Xtra Airways, a Coral Gables, Florida-based charter airline beckons on its sharp red, white, and blue homepage.

Xtra’s site describes its “customer profile” as consisting of package tour operators, dignitaries, rock stars, even to an entire audience between NYC and LA for a taping of “Ellen.” For their part, Xtra’s flight attendants describe themselves as “fabulous!”

Xtra has also operated charter flights for Funjet Vacations, which flies from the Midwest to Mexico and the Caribbean, as well as similar service for Apple Vacations, a subsidiary of the Apple Leisure Group, which also owns CheapCaribbean.com.

What Xtra Airways doesn’t go out of its way to publicize is that it has spent years transporting deportees to many of those very same places for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In addition to operating government-owned planes, Xtra has its own fleet. So that same pilot taking you to sunny Cancun could have been flying deportees back to Latin America a short time before.

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/exclusive-airline-flies-snowbirds-to-mexico-deports-immigrants-for-ice?ref=home