The Fight on the Tarmac: Baltimore Rises Against Secrecy in Deportation Flights
Sunday morning at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport was anything but routine. Instead of the usual hum of rolling suitcases, the air vibrated with angry chants and the sharp flares of protest signs. Grassroots coalitions—including the Baltimore Rapid Response Network, Maryland Indivisible Chapters, and Doctors for Camp Closure—joined forces, assembling under banners that read “Avelo Airlines fuels fascism” and “Evilo.” Their demand was clear: Maryland must sever its partnership with Avelo Airlines, a low-cost carrier now contracted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to transport detainees—often out of sight, out of mind.
At the demonstration’s center was a piercing sense of betrayal, amplified by the revelation that Avelo’s $150 million federal contract commenced just weeks prior, initiating a series of chartered deportation flights that cut through both domestic and international airspace. Protesters drew attention to the airline’s active recruitment for these controversial routes—ads offering $28 an hour to new flight attendants willing to work ICE charters—underscoring the commercial machinery fueling these removals. Hundreds marched not only for the rights of the detained but for the soul of the state itself. What kind of Maryland, they asked, quietly profits from this?
Visibility matters. The current climate of U.S. immigration enforcement—fraught with waves of hysteria, dubious legal rationales, and a bureaucratic shadow—has left many Americans, intentionally or otherwise, shielded from the reality of deportations. According to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, the majority of Americans support pathways to citizenship and humane policy for undocumented immigrants, yet operations like these often proceed in the shadows, facilitated by private companies eager for federal contracts. That’s the disconnect these activists are fighting to expose—that these are not abstract policy machinations, but acts with dire human cost and moral weight.
Accountability at a Crossroads: Contracts, Secrecy, and the Language of Responsibility
The coalition’s arguments cut sharply: Detainment aboard a plane is still detention, no matter how sanitized the surroundings or bureaucratic the language. Organizers emphasized that putting someone on a plane they cannot leave amounts to deprivation of liberty, and that such actions—happening on Maryland soil at BWI Airport—contradict the values that Marylanders, and Americans at large, so often espouse.
Over 5,000 people have signed petitions urging the state to end Avelo’s contract with ICE. Protesters are not alone in their concerns. The Governor’s office, facing mounting public pressure and reports of troubling health and safety conditions on similar flights around the country, admitted it is weighing all available options. A spokesperson told the Baltimore Sun, “The administration is deeply concerned about any civil rights or safety issues, and is committed to reviewing the legality of these operations at BWI.” That Maryland’s own Aviation Commission has the power to terminate airline contracts with as little as 30 days’ notice—if there’s cause—adds a tangible sense of urgency, turning protest into potential policy.
History confirms the need for vigilance. Airlines have been quietly enlisted in government deportation operations since at least the Clinton era, often without scrutiny or full transparency. In 2019, when Southwest and Delta employees discovered their own airlines were running similar ICE charters, they too demanded accountability. As historian and immigration policy scholar Dr. Aviva Chomsky reminds us, the infrastructure of detention “depends on public silence and corporate indifference.” This is, in the end, a familiar American pattern, one that begins to break only when ordinary people refuse to cooperate and demand sunlight in the shadows.
“Putting someone on a plane they cannot leave is a form of detention, and it is happening at our airport. Maryland has a choice—and a responsibility—to stand up for human dignity.”
What’s new today is the clarity with which activists are connecting immigration policy to broader democratic values. “No one voted for Avelo to pocket millions in exchange for outsourcing the government’s most painful work,” a protester said, as reported by WBAL-TV. The fight isn’t just about one airline; it’s about whether public institutions should endorse—or quietly enable—mechanisms of exclusion and dispossession.
Whose Airport? Contested Space and the Battle for Moral Direction
Every public space is a mirror for societal values, and airports—global crossroads and symbols of movement—are no exception. The protest at BWI wasn’t merely about transportation logistics. With signs referencing the resurgence of Trump-era extremism (“Avelo is disappearing people for Trump”), advocates warn that Maryland risks being complicit in a punitive regime that often bypasses due process, separates families, and delivers deportees into dangerous or unstable conditions. These are not hypothetical harms: Legal aid organizations chronicled cases of deportees returning to nations where violence, persecution, and poverty await. The consequences ripple outward, affecting families, workplaces, schools, and the broader fabric of democracy itself.
Supporters of such deportation flights argue that law enforcement agencies must fulfill their mandates, and that private partners like Avelo are simply providing a necessary service. Yet this framing evades a more profound truth: Profit should not be the engine of justice—especially when the most vulnerable communities pay the price. Harvard Law Professor Carol Steiker emphasizes that “when the public good becomes the private profit, oversight erodes, and rights are too easily suspended behind the closed doors of a chartered jet.” The privatization of deportation flights not only limits transparency but also fragments accountability, making it harder for communities and families to know what is truly happening—and who, exactly, is responsible.
The protest movement at BWI grew around a narrative both urgent and universal. While Marylanders continue to flood their representatives’ offices with calls and emails, it is worth asking: What kind of state, what kind of country, do you want your airport to represent? Is it a port of opportunity and safety, or a launchpad for silent removals? This moment at BWI is a test—not just of political will, but of the moral imagination and resolve of everyone invested in protecting democracy, equity, and dignity for all who call America home.
