Key airline used by Trump for deportations cuts ties with ICE

Driving the news: Avelo, which is based in Houston, will on January 27 close its base at Mesa Gateway Airport in Arizona, where the airline has been carrying out these flights, Courtney Goff, a spokesperson, confirmed.

• "The program provided short-term benefits but ultimately did not deliver enough consistent and predictable revenue to overcome its operational complexity and costs," Goff said.
• CEO Andrew Levy, in an email to employees viewed by CNBC, said that "We moved a portion of our fleet into a government program which promised more financial stability but placed us in the center of a political controversy."

What they're saying: In response to a request for comment, a DHS spokesperson said that ICE never "contracted directly" with Avelo.

• "ICE will continue to utilize its contracted service provider, which works with multiple airlines to support the American people's mandate for mass deportations of criminal illegal aliens."
• DHS did not immediately respond to Axios' request for more specifics about the service provider.

Catch up quick: Immigrant advocacy groups across the country have decried the relatively young budget airline's relationship with ICE.

• Protests took place last year in cities where Avelo has bases, such as Wilmington, North Carolina, Nashville, Tennessee, and New Haven, Connecticut.
• "Avelo used to call itself New Haven's hometown airline," Anne Watkins, an organizer with New Haven Immigrants Coalition, told the Yale Daily News last year.
• "We have friends and neighbors who have been directly impacted by deportation and detention. We don't want a company that is profiting directly off of those activities to be here in New Haven."

Flashback: Avelo became the target of a number of viral campaigns as well.

• The progressive group Gen-Z for Change created a tool allowing people to overwhelm Avelo with useless applications in response to its job postings for the deportation flights.
• Seth Miller, an independent aviation journalist and New Hampshire state lawmaker, launched advertisements on two billboards near Tweed New Haven Airport with the message: "Does your vacation support their deportation? Just say AvelNO!"
• "This move will not end the deportations, but it is good to see a company dropping out of the business, and paying a price for its participation along the way," Miller told Axios.

The union representing flight attendants for Avelo also praised the end of the flights.

• "The airline industry is constantly changing, but we've faced far too much change at our airline including operating certain flights we didn't originally sign up for," the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, the flight attendants' union, said in a statement to members.
• "We're hopeful that with the end of the ICE flying and new financing the future is more stable for Flight Attendants at Avelo."

Yes, but: Avelo has been carrying out scheduled, full-aircraft flights for ICE, but some deportations can still occur on commercial flights.

• There have been reports that ICE uses false call signs and blocked tail numbers to disguise deportation flights from publicly-available trackers, making the exact number difficult to quantify, the AP reported last year.

Zoom out: ICE deports immigrants through both commercial and chartered flights.

• Over 80% of deportation flights are operated by Avelo, GlobalX, and Eastern Air Express, per the AP.
• Neither ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security confirmed whether Avelo is the only commercial airline carrying out deportations.

By the numbers: The Trump administration oversaw more than 605,000 deportations last year, according to the DHS.

• That's more removals than those under former President Biden's entire time in office.
• According to ICE data, between the first and last full months of the Biden administration, the agency removed about 517,000 people from the U.S.

Editor's note: This story has been updated with a DHS statement.