Memphis immigrant rights advocates are demanding that Wilson Air Center, a private aviation terminal on the grounds of Memphis International Airport, stop servicing charter flights that carry detained immigrants out of Tennessee. The call follows months of tracking by volunteers with the mutual aid group Vecindarios 901, who say they identified 51 flights departing the facility since March and traced most of those trips to a staging site in Alexandria, Louisiana. On Tuesday, a press conference outside the airport business was cut short after Memphis police threatened to tow the organizers' vehicles.
Police Cut Short Airport Protest As Vehicles Threatened With Tow
Tuesday's demonstration outside Wilson Air Center brought together members of Vecindarios 901 and the Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action and Hope, but organizers ended their press conference early after officers threatened to tow their vehicles, according to LocalMemphis. The abrupt end to the event underscored the tension surrounding the business, which sits on the site of Memphis International Airport.
Flight Tracking Points To A Louisiana Staging Facility
Vecindarios 901, described as a Memphis mutual aid organization coordinating a rapid-response network for immigrants affected by ICE, says its volunteers used publicly available flight-tracking data to follow the 51 flights that left Wilson Air Center since March, according to the Memphis Flyer. Most of those flights were traced to Alexandria, Louisiana, where ICE has established a large detention facility. Co-founder Maria Oceja has urged the airport business's owners to reconsider their role in the Trump administration's detention and deportation operations, the outlet reported. Wilson Air Center did not respond to the Memphis Flyer's request for comment.
Restraints And Safety Concerns During Transport
Advocates have also raised safety concerns about the restraints used aboard the flights. Detainees are transported using handcuffs, waist chains, and leg irons under ICE policy requiring individuals to be fully restrained during flights, and advocates argue that could place people at risk during air emergencies, per the same account. An ICE spokesperson called allegations of inhumane treatment or attempts to hide information categorically false, telling the outlet the agency remains committed to the safety and welfare of people in custody throughout transfer and removal and that ICE provides meals and drinks to detainees during flights.
How ICE Air Operations Moves Detainees Nationwide
ICE Air Operations, a division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, contracts with airline companies to coordinate the majority of flights transporting detained immigrants to detention centers and on international deportation flights, providing air transportation to 25 enforcement and removal operations field offices, the same reporting shows. Detainees moved out of Memphis are flown to detention centers in Louisiana, Alabama, or other parts of the country, with ICE saying such transfers occur for capacity, security, or logistical needs. ICE enforcement flights totaled 1,889 in June, up 59 percent from June 2025, according to the ICE Flight Monitor cited in that reporting.
Task Force Surge Fills Mason Detention Facility
The spike in flights traces back to a surge in local arrests. Immigration arrests in Shelby County tripled after the federalized Memphis Safe Task Force launched in September 2025, with 647 ICE arrests recorded in the final 13 weeks of that year compared with 526 across the preceding 36 weeks, according to the Institute for Public Service Reporting. Increased statewide detentions have brought hundreds of immigrants to a detention center in Mason, Tennessee, about 40 miles from Memphis International Airport.
That facility, the West Tennessee Detention Facility, reopened in September 2025 under a 600-bed intergovernmental agreement between ICE, the Town of Mason, and private operator CoreCivic, generating an estimated $30 million in annual revenue for the company, according to CoreCivic. From Memphis, many detainees are flown to GEO Group's 400-bed Alexandria Staging Facility in Louisiana, which functions as a roughly 72-hour transit hub handling about 1,000 ICE detainees a week before deportation or transfer, according to GEO Group.
The Family Business Behind The Hangar
Wilson Air Center sits on the site of Memphis International Airport and is one of several general aviation terminals the company operates in Memphis, Houston, and Chattanooga. Founded in 1996 by Robert A. Wilson, the fixed-base operator chain is owned by Kemmons Wilson Companies, the Memphis family enterprise built by Holiday Inn founder Kemmons Wilson, according to Wilson Air Center.
Federal Courts Have Limited Local Power To Ground The Flights
Even if advocates persuade the Wilson family to act, legal precedent suggests local governments have little authority to force the issue themselves. In November 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed that local government orders barring private fixed-base operators from servicing ICE charter flights violate federal intergovernmental immunity and airport land agreements, a ruling that upheld ICE flight operations at Seattle's Boeing Field.
The Memphis dispute also unfolds against a broader legal fight over the task force itself. The ACLU of Tennessee filed a federal lawsuit this year against top federal and state officials, alleging that task force agents engaged in illegal surveillance, traffic stops, and intimidation against community observers monitoring ICE arrests in Memphis, according to the ACLU of Tennessee.
Memphis Joins A Pattern Seen At Other Airports
Memphis is not the only city where activists have targeted private aviation companies over ICE charters. In Dallas, demonstrators gathered outside Atlantic Aviation's hangar at Love Field in June 2026, a campaign that drove ICE flights from the hangar, shifting operations to a secondary fixed-base operator at the same airport. Nationwide, Human Rights First's ICE Flight Monitor documented 7,110 total ICE-chartered flights through April 2026, with 4,980 of those categorized as domestic shuffle transfers moving detainees between regional detention centers and staging sites.
Not every airport authority has responded to pressure the same way. In Detroit, the Wayne County Airport Authority voted 7-0 in February 2026 to continue permitting ICE detainee charter flights at Detroit Metropolitan Airport and Willow Run Airport despite protests and legal objections, as Hoodline reported. Whether Wilson Air Center follows Dallas's example or Detroit's remains an open question in Memphis.
