In order to get documents outlining U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s plans to implement President-elect Donald Trump’s promised mass deportation and detention plan, the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California is suing the government.
The lawsuit, which was submitted to the U.S. District Court on Monday, requires ICE to reveal agreements for ground transportation, commercial and charter flights, and internal processes required for the deportation of noncitizen detainees, including those who have unaccompanied minors.
According to the lawsuit, the records sought touch a topic of significant public interest. Even though these flights are often the vehicle for deportation and play a crucial part in the removal system, ICE Air is nevertheless cloaked in secrecy.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the deportation flight system has changed over the last few decades from being a government-run operation by the U.S. Marshals Service utilizing publicly owned aircraft to a vast and opaque network of flights on privately owned chartered aircraft.
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ICE does not comment on ongoing or upcoming litigation, said to ICE spokesperson Mike Alvarez on Tuesday.
The lawsuit was brought after ICE did not reply to the ACLU’s August Freedom of Information Act request. It comes after Trump reiterated in remarks that on the first day of his second term, which starts on January 20, he would begin the biggest deportation program in American history.
According to a report released by the agency, ICE Air Operations carried out 1,178 flights in 2023 under the Biden administration, sending over 142,000 noncitizens to over 170 nations, including 69,902 individuals who had been accused or found guilty of crimes.
The ACLU claims that although ICE Air flights are essential to the removal process, information regarding its deportation infrastructure is nevertheless confidential.
According to the lawsuit, this concealment has obscured accountability for grave misconduct and risk on ICE Air flights. The information requested will serve to clarify ICE’s removal procedures and educate the public about the dangers that would arise from future expansion of ICE Air’s capabilities.
In particular, the ACLU is requesting that the court direct ICE to promptly release:
Every ICE contract and document pertaining to air transportation used to carry out removals, including domestic flights that move noncitizens between detention facilities and aircraft that depart the United States.
documents that detail the modes of ground transportation used to carry noncitizens to airports in preparation for removal flights.
documents that list the airfields that ICE has access to or uses for removal.
ICE’s policies and procedures for staging noncitizens, including unaccompanied minors, for removal prior to flights are detailed in memoranda and other papers.
Trump has not provided details on how the operation would be carried out, but he reaffirmed Monday that he plans to declare a national emergency that would enable the deployment of the U.S. military to carry out the mass deportations.
Eva Bitran, director of immigrants’ rights at ACLU SoCal, said in a statement that while little is known about how President-elect Trump would implement his mass deportation goal, it is certain that this proposal has already caused anxiety among immigrant populations. The public is entitled to know how taxpayer funds could be used to finance deportation flights that would destroy our neighborhoods and families.
According to the Pew Research Center, the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States increased to 11 million in 2022, but it is still less than the peak of 12.2 million in 2007. The majority of people are not convicted of any crimes.
The American Immigration Council stated in a research published in October that mass deportations would have a disastrous effect on the American economy and budget. The research estimated that a one-time mass deportation operation would cost roughly $315 billion. The cost would be $167.8 billion for detention, $34.1 billion for legal procedures, $89.3 billion for arrests, and $24.1 billion for removals.
According to the analysis, deporting one million immigrants annually would cost $88 billion, with the majority of that money going toward the construction of detention facilities.
Mass deportations would also harm a number of important U.S. industries that depend significantly on illegal labor, especially the hotel, agricultural, and construction sectors.
The advocacy group American Immigration Council said it could not predict the additional hiring costs for the tens of thousands of agents required to make one million arrests annually, the capital expenditures required to expand the fleet of charter aircraft operated by ICE Air Operations, and numerous other expenses to increase federal immigration enforcement.
According to the report, discussing the magnitude of the financial and economic consequences of mass deportations does not downplay the significance of this suffering. It serves to highlight how drastic a deportation effort against millions of undocumented immigrants—who have played a crucial role in the American economy and communities—would be.
States and the federal government are spending billions of dollars on social services to deal with the flood of people who are illegally crossing the southern border or applying for asylum, according to other organizations like the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
According to FAIR, Texas spent roughly $9 billion on illegal immigration in 2022, while California spent $22 billion. Florida, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois came next.
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