The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has quietly taken a big step toward building its own dedicated deportation fleet. With a new contract worth nearly $140 million, DHS will purchase a small fleet of Boeing 737 aircraft that will be used for removal flights, funded by a huge budget increase for immigration enforcement recently approved by Congress.
DHS Buying Its Own Boeing 737 Fleet For Deportation Flights
According to The Washington Post, DHS has signed a contract to acquire six Boeing 737s that will be used for deportation operations. Until now, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has relied on chartered aircraft to move people out of the country. The new deal signals a shift toward owning and operating a dedicated fleet, suggesting deportation flights will become more regular, more integrated, and more visible as a standing government operation.
This spending comes out of roughly $170 billion that Congress authorized over four years for President Trump’s border and immigration agenda as part of the GOP tax bill earlier this year. The officials who spoke about the deal did so anonymously, noting that details had not yet been publicly disclosed.
But Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokeswoman, later confirmed the news and clarified that the air fleet would save money “by allowing ICE to operate more effectively, including by using more efficient flight patterns.”
“We are delighted to see [you] highlighting the Trump administration’s cost-effective and innovative ways of delivering on the American people’s mandate for mass deportations of criminal illegal aliens.”
Unanswered Questions About The New Deportation Fleet
There is still far more that we do not know than we do know. A few questions immediately come to mind:
- Who will actually operate these aircraft? Will the flights be run by government pilots, a contractor, or some hybrid model that looks more like the “Janet” flights to Area 51 that quietly shuttle employees back and forth?
- Will there be flight attendants on board? If so, will they be federal employees with specialized training, contractors, or some entirely new role that blends security, medical, and cabin safety responsibilities?
- Where will the planes be based? Will DHS park these 737s at a major hub like Dallas, Houston, or Miami, or use less visible secondary airports that already see a lot of ICE traffic?
- How frequently will these flights operate? Are we talking about occasional missions when charters are not available, or a regular schedule that looks and feels like an airline route map for deportations?
- What happens between flights? Where will the aircraft be maintained, who will service them, and will they ever be used for anything other than removals?
- Why is a dedicated fleet necessary now? Is this about cost savings, reliability, optics, or simply about locking in the infrastructure to make higher volumes of deportations easier to execute?
These are not trivial operational details…and we are talking about a lot of taxpayer dollars.
CONCLUSION
On one level, this is a story about aircraft and contracts. DHS is spending almost $140 million on six Boeing 737s, funded by a much larger pot of immigration enforcement money. On another level, it is about what kind of country the United States wants to be, and how openly it wants to institutionalize deportation as a routine, in-house aviation operation.
A dedicated government fleet suggests that removal flights are not a temporary surge, but a long-term fixture of this administration. Until DHS answers basic questions about how these planes will be used, who will staff them, and why ownership is preferable to charters, it is hard not to see this as a symbolic as well as practical escalation in how America approaches immigration enforcement.
> Read More: The Secret U.S. Government Airline
When a Democrat becomes president, will the planes get sold or will they be repurposed to transport newcomers around the country the way Biden did?
No. Like the new Air Force One, all the planes are going to Trump’s fantastic new Presidential Library.
Was that stuff about Biden mostly debunked?
https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/biden-secret-flights-of-migrants-debunked/
What DHS really needs is an A380 “Hajj” edition. Or a fleet of them.
No money for food or health programs, but sure, buy some multi-million dollar planes.
Plus tax cuts for the rich and gyms in airports.
Not true. The rich are still taxed at 40% estate tax when they die. No way for Elon Musk to avoid it.
Who was helped were the slightly rich who don’t have to sell the family business to pay estate tax because the exclusion threshold was kept the same instead of excluding not much more than a California house and a medium sized bank account.
Social media has a lot of lies and false memes.
Deport the people on those “programs” as well.
Won’t need any money for them.
“Follow the money”
“That’s a bingo!”
Noem didn’t spend the outrageous budget, so now they will buy jets ( likely without a plan ) . Rumor suggests that the poser will now be moving on to campaigning. So bye kristi, don’t let the door hit ya where the dog should have bit ya.
Wow, there are many airliners just sitting in the boneyard that could be put back into service for much less dollars.
Yup, and since these folks don’t actually ‘care’ about this particular ‘cargo’ they could skimp on safety and it would be ‘just fine’ to them.
Pilot:Sean Duffy
Flight attendant: RFK serving dead animals!
Your tax dollars at work. And the grifting continues….
Very happy that my tax dollars are bing used in this way.
Getting what I voted for.
Bad news for Avelo and GlobalX. They must have made someone in the administration mad.
Great!
Keep sending them back,
GET OUT AND STAY OUT!
Could you share more details of your desired plans for our dear country? If it were Walter Barry’s world, what would it look like?