Immigrant advocates gathered outside Salt Lake City International Airport on Thursday to protest detainee flights that organizers say happen like clockwork every Monday and Thursday out of the airport's general aviation area. Demonstrators picketed in a designated free speech zone near baggage carousel 9, holding signs and telling reporters that most travelers passing through the terminal have no idea the flights are happening at all.
“Most people are unaware of what happens at the airport every Monday and Thursday,” said Carolyn Jenkins, one of the advocates at the demonstration, as reported by KSL.com. Jenkins said she witnessed detainees boarding a flight shackled at both their hands and ankles, according to the outlet's report. Fellow advocate Clare Coonan called the flights an example of overly heavy-handed action against immigrants and said she wants the flights stopped, alleging abuse by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Coonan argued the transfers are deliberately designed to sever detainees from family, community, and legal representation, and said the twice-weekly schedule makes it harder for people in custody to exercise their constitutional due process rights, per the same account. According to demonstration organizers, 386 immigrants left the airport by air in July alone, moved from one detention facility to another within the country's immigration system rather than deported outright.
Tracking Flights From The Tarmac
Much of what advocates know about the operation comes from independent tracking. TJ Young has monitored air activity connected to the detainee flights since April and has posted photos of shackled detainees boarding chartered aircraft to social media, the report notes. Young told the outlet that friends and family members of detainees have since reached out after recognizing loved ones in those posts.
The flights depart from the general aviation area east of the airport's main commercial terminals, a section served by two fixed-base operations that otherwise handle charter flights and private air travelers. The charter carriers identified operating the flights are Global Crossing, Eastern Air Express, and Air Wisconsin; representatives of all three did not immediately respond to requests for comment, the article states. Destinations tracked from Salt Lake City have included Tacoma, Washington; El Paso, Texas; and Bakersfield, California.
The Department of Homeland Security declined to provide specifics about the flights, citing security concerns, and said it will not confirm which airports operate deportation flights for operational reasons. In a statement, DHS said ICE and its partners face attacks and demonization, and cited a 1,300 percent increase in assaults against ICE officers. The agency also said nearly 70 percent of ICE arrests involve people charged or convicted of a crime in the United States, and that arrests also include individuals linked to human rights abuses, wanted foreign fugitives, terrorists, and gang members without a U.S. rap sheet. Advocates who participated in Thursday's demonstration countered that most immigrant detainees they have tracked do not have violent criminal records.
A Broader Pattern Of Domestic Shuffle Flights
The Salt Lake City flights fit into a much larger national picture. Non-profit flight monitoring by Human Rights First recorded 7,110 ICE-chartered flights through April 2026, with 4,980 of them categorized as domestic “shuffle” flights moving detainees between staging facilities rather than flying them out of the country. Aviation tracking data compiled by Witness at the Border, cited by Hoodline in its Milwaukee reporting, recorded a 123 percent surge in domestic inter-facility transfer flights during mid-2026, pushing total ICE flights above 200 per month nationwide.
Global Crossing Airlines, known as GlobalX, is one of the carriers named in Salt Lake City and has carried out more than half of all U.S. deportation flights in 2024 and 2025, according to the Columbia Spectator. Air Wisconsin, another carrier flying out of Salt Lake City, turned to ICE charter contracts to fill operational capacity after it lost its regional commercial contract with American Airlines and laid off hundreds of workers in early 2025. Chartering these aircraft is not cheap for taxpayers: federal immigration air transportation is brokered primarily through CSI Aviation, with charter costs ranging from $8,500 an hour for standard routes up to $26,800 an hour for specialized or high-risk flights, according to WKYC.
Salt Lake City is not the only city where officials have pushed back against these arrangements. Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey sent formal demand letters to GlobalX and Eastern Air Express executives in January, calling for an end to ICE flights at Hanscom Field and alleging that rapid transfers intentionally obstruct legal representation, according to the Massachusetts governor's office. Similar community pushback has surfaced at general aviation hangars in Dallas and Memphis in recent weeks, per Hoodline's earlier coverage.
A City Already Fighting ICE Expansion
Thursday's picket comes months after Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County sued the Department of Homeland Security and ICE over plans to convert an 833,000-square-foot warehouse into a mega detention center for up to 10,000 immigrants, citing infrastructure strains and a lack of required environmental review, according to the City of Salt Lake City. Following that litigation and public pressure, federal officials signaled in June that DHS was planning to offload the warehouse site along with six other planned facilities nationwide, shifting toward using existing county jail space instead, per KSL TV.
That pivot away from a dedicated mega-facility helps explain why rapid air transfers out of general aviation hangars, rather than long-term local detention, have become the visible face of enforcement in Salt Lake City. State corrections officers have also become part of the pipeline: in May 2025, the Utah Department of Corrections signed a 287(g) Warrant Service Officer agreement with ICE authorizing trained officers to execute administrative immigration warrants and issue detainers on people already in state custody, according to KUER.
The airport has been a flashpoint before. In October 2025, ICE agents arrested a mother of four in the pre-security baggage claim area, sparking protests and prompting Mayor Erin Mendenhall to clarify that municipal police were not involved in the federal operation. Whether city or airport officials can legally restrict charter operators from leasing tarmac space for these flights, and how county jail capacity is adapting as DHS moves away from building new mega-facilities, remain open questions.
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