WHQR's Sunday Edition is a free weekly newsletter delivered every Sunday morning. You can sign up for Sunday Edition here and find past editions here.
Hello, Avelo
Earlier this month, the Associated Press reported that Avelo Airlines was contracting with the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to carry out deportation flights.
Avelo founder and CEO Andrew Levy acknowledged in a statement that this would likely be, to put it mildly, an unpopular move with many people – but pointed to the ultra-low-cost airline’s bottom line.
“We realize this is a sensitive and complicated topic. After significant deliberations, we determined this charter flying will provide us with the stability to continue expanding our core scheduled passenger service and keep our more than 1,100 Crewmembers employed for years to come," Levy wrote.
Founded in 2018, Avelo’s first flight was in California in 2021 and the company started offering service at Wilmington International Airport in the summer of 2022 – the first discount airline to do so. Since then, Avelo has steadily added more routes, with tickets costing a fraction of what other major airlines charge, sometimes an order of magnitude less.
The airport authority has worked hard to incentivize Avelo and other discount airlines, according to reporting from the Greater Wilmington Business Journal’s Cece Nunn. ILM worked with the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce, with funding from New Hanover County and other agencies, to help bring those carriers to Wilmington, Nunn reported.
Avelo and ILM have actively – and successfully – solicited media coverage of new routes as they were added (and while airline connectivity is a legitimate economic development story, I think the press has been a little too willing to give Avelo what amounts to free advertising). Former New Hanover County Commissioner Julia Olson-Boseman made Avelo’s impending arrival at ILM part of her failed 2022 primary campaign, shamelessly repeating the airline’s slogan – “Hello, Avelo” – to the crowd at a candidates’ forum.
More recently, in fact just a few days before the news about Avelo’s DHS contract broke, there was a ribbon cutting at ILM as the airline opened a new base of operations in Wilmington – its eighth, nationwide – and inaugurated a host of new direct routes. It was an all-smiles bipartisan event, with Governor Josh Stein wielding the ceremonial oversized scissors.
After the DHS contract announcement, there was a fair amount of Wilmington-area pushback on social media — and a handful of emails and messages to the WHQR newsroom — calling for Avelo to be boycotted, deprived of public incentive funding, or publicly shamed.
WECT ran an article with the headline, “Avelo Airlines to not operate deportation flights at ILM Airport,” seemingly implying the airline’s response to these outcries was to perform DHS flights out of a new hub in Mesa, Arizona instead of Wilmington. Earlier reporting makes it clear that Avelo had already planned to base its three Boeing 737 charter planes from AZA.
There’s been protests and petitions elsewhere, as well – most forcefully in Connecticut, where Attorney General William Tong formally threatened Avelo with reprisals if it couldn’t provide certain guarantees, including that the airline would:
- Not operate deportation flights from Connecticut
- Not shackle, handcuff, or otherwise restrain non-violent passengers or children
- Provide safety plans for evacuating passengers (which can be difficult if they are in restraints)
- Obey court orders, like those currently being defied by the Trump Administration
- Not operate flights with American-born children or passengers for whom there is no valid order of removal
Tong wrote that Avelo had benefited from the state's support, including tax breaks, and needed to be accountable.
“Connecticut taxpayers have supported Avelo’s growth in our state by exempting state taxes on aviation fuel. Connecticut public officials have joined Avelo in celebrating and promoting new routes and expanded business in our state. Such support is a policy choice that may be revisited should Avelo’s business practices conflict with Connecticut priorities and policies. We are owed answers on Avelo’s Homeland Security contract to determine whether Avelo’s business practices can remain compatible with such state support,” Tong wrote (you can find his full letter, here).
Tong’s concerns about the DHS flights were explicitly framed in the context of the Trump Administration’s deportation efforts.
“Violent criminals should be arrested, prosecuted, and where appropriate, deported. But Trump’s cruel and reckless deportation program has unlawfully undermined legitimate law enforcement by ensnaring innocent parents, students, and children. And even when Trump’s own lawyers admit to errors, they claim no ability to right their wrongs,” Tong wrote.
(I reached out to North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson’s office to see if they had a position on Avelo; a spokesperson told me they were “not aware” of any conversations about the airline.)
But while the Trump Administration has taken unprecedented — and potentially illegal, even unconstitutional — measures to pursue deportations, most of the concerns Tong and others have voiced about deportation flights are not new.
Private airlines have been contracting with DHS since at least the Obama Administration. Throughout the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations, over 100,000 people have been flown out of the United States annually, mostly to Central America, through a program called ICE Air. In recent years, the majority of those flights have been contracted to GlobalX, a private charter airline. It was GlobalX flights that carried Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, sparking a legal fight that has brought the Trump Administration to the brink of being held in contempt by Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia.
The dehumanizing conditions, including the shackling of non-violent deportees, decried by Tong have long been a feature of ICE Air. In fact, the ProPublica reportingt Tong cited in his letter to Avelo explicitly notes:
Most of the migrants crowding the back seats of ICE Air’s planes have not been, historically, convicted criminals. ICE makes restraints mandatory nonetheless. “Detainees transported by ICE Air aircraft will be fully restrained by the use of handcuffs, waist chains, and leg irons,“ reads an unredacted version of the 2015 ICE Air Operations Handbook, which was obtained by the Center for Constitutional Rights, a legal advocacy group.
So why the broader outcry – and increased media coverage – of Avelo compared to GlobalX?
For one, it’s unusual for a commercial airline to take a DHS contract. As the AP noted, “Tom Cartwright, a flight data analyst for the advocacy group Witness at the Border, whose social media feeds are closely watched in immigration circles, said he isn’t aware of any other commercial airlines that have provided such flights for ICE in the past five years he’s been tracking flights. He called the decision by Avelo ‘unusual’ considering charter companies the public likely hasn’t heard of typically make these flights.”
Avelo is a much more public-facing company than GlobalX. The airline has leaned into a sunny, cheery, ‘flying-is-fun’ vibe, with YouTube commercials that feature crew and staff testimonials. That’s hard to reconcile with a plane full of people shackled and waist-chained. GlobalX does run some private charters from Miami to Havana, but its valuable contracts with DHS probably insulate it from, say, social media cancellation.
Avelo has also lobbied hard for incentives, tax breaks, and other public support to help it grow — which means there are probably more public officials out there who have shaken hands with Avelo and may now be staring down at their palms regretfully. (To be fair, there are also plenty of conservative officials who feel just fine about working with Avelo, irrespective — or even because — of the work they’re doing for DHS.)
That doesn’t mean GlobalX has been totally unscathed. Just this week, Executive Chairman Chris Jamroz stepped down as director of the Royal Ontario Museum’s board of governors after independent journalist Rachel Gilmore reported on GlobalX’s role in deportation flights. (Kudos to Canada’s National Observer for giving Gilmore credit.)
And, of course, there’s the fact that Trump’s deportation campaign is significantly different from the policies of past administrations — and even from his own first term. Trump’s dehumanizing rhetoric, trafficking in racist stereotypes, and challenges to and defiance of the judiciary, have sharpened the debate and the divide on immigration in a way I haven’t seen before. And his suggestion that even naturalized citizens could be deported is an escalation that would have been politically unthinkable five years ago, I’d argue.
It’s true that GlobalX and other charter airlines have been doing DHS’ dirty work under three presidents, two of them Democrats. But this is the first time U.S. citizens have had to actually worry about being on one of their planes — or one of Avelo’s.
Letter to the Editor
We welcome letters to the editor’s desk on any topic. Our ideal length is around 400 words or less, but if they need to be a little longer, that’s fine. We reserve the right to edit or add context when necessary. We ask that submissions come with your name and where you live (no street address necessary, just your neighborhood, town, city, etc.). Criticisms are welcome, but we ask you to try to keep it civil.
Send your letter to BSchachtman@whqr.org — or by mail, if you're old school, to WHQR Public Media 254 N. Front Street, Suite 300, Wilmington, NC 28401.
This edition’s letter comes Wilmington Jonathan Berger, a who recently retired from the U.S. Department of State and ran last year as a Democratic candidate for North Carolina House District 20. Berger wrote this letter along with a group of his fellow retired Foreign Service Officers, including two ambassadors. You can find their names below this letter:
America’s Department of State employees work, every day and around the world, to enhance U.S. national security, protect Americans traveling or living overseas, and advance American economic interests. Yet the Trump administration is undermining this crucial work, perhaps because it does not understand the importance of maintaining a strong American diplomatic presence around the globe. Instead it is initiating plans to close down embassies and consulates and cutting programs that build goodwill with other countries and their populations. In today's extremely interconnected and dangerous world -- which now includes cyber-attacks, along with nuclear warheads on intercontinental ballistic missiles – we need to continue building bridges rather than burning them down.
As former U.S. Foreign Service Officers with over 200 years combined of dedicated service to the American people – including in hardship posts – we know that Americans' prosperity and security at home and abroad depends greatly on sensible and stable international relations with our neighbors, allies, and even our competitors. Diplomats doing their jobs help prevent American troops from lethal engagements. Given the on-going efforts by Russia and China to undermine America's global influence, defense alliances, and trade relations, the Trump Administration is wrong to weaken two of the three legs of our foreign-policy “stool”: diplomacy and development, AS WELL AS defense. Slashing and burning human and financial resources from these three areas doesn’t put America’s interests first; in fact, it emboldens and strengthens our enemies and makes us weaker.
Therefore, we need to act now and forcefully to voice our support for America’s foreign policy tools. We urge you to write to your NC senators and representatives telling them to increase – not decrease – financial and human resources for the Department of State, including for America’s foreign assistance programs that project the best of our country’s values. This way we can protect America and build needed international goodwill. Bolstering the State Department would truly be putting America’s interests first.
Sincerely,
Ambassador (ret) Deborah Malac
Ambassador (ret) Craig Cloud
Alain Norman
Jonathan Berger
Jim Gray
Bill Miller
Ann Stewart
Michele Therien
***
This week, the Trump White House proposed a nearly 50% cut to the State Department budget. A similar move during Trump’s first term was deflated by Congress, but in Trump’s second term the House and Senate have been increasingly deferential to the White House, surrendering in some cases the power of the purse. So the State Department, once a stalwart U.S. institution with bipartisan support, seems very much at risk — part of Trump’s significant departure from the status quo, including the international order.
For decades, American diplomacy, backed by colossal firepower, has worked to expand the reach of trade, democracy, and human rights. There have been some grizzly mistakes and some glaring blind spots, but on the whole, the mission has always seemed part and parcel of American exceptionalism, the outward-facing reason for having a city upon the hill. I think I can say, Trump is the first president in my lifetime to seriously trouble that belief.
I’m a local journalist, by trade and disposition, so I admit I’m not the best interlocutor for a conversation about foreign policy and geopolitics. But I know enough to know that the Trump White House, especially this second administration, is leaning hard into having “rejected globalism and embraced patriotism,” as Trump said in the final year of his first term.
There are geopolitical arguments, from the left and right, for unwinding what we used to call the “New World Order,” the paradigm invoked by CIA-director-turned-president George H.W. Bush as he marshaled allies around the globe against Saddam Hussein. Suffice for this newsletter to say, you can hear some of the same talking points about the United States and the global order from fans of Tucker Carlson and Rage Against the Machine.
But most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about things like Bretton Woods or neoliberalism. Many people I’ve spoken to about the State Department have only an approximate idea of what it does, how it relates to and differs from the Department of Defense, how it treats international versus national priorities, or even its budget (around $60 billion).
When it comes to Trump supporters, in particular, folks tend to see things pretty plainly: America First.
The idea of spending time, energy, and money abroad trying to remake the geopolitical landscape, to steer the outcome in Ukraine, Afghanistan, or even Israel while there are American families struggling — with rent, or food prices, or disaster recovery — makes them livid. Look no further than the anti-globalist language found in the online discourse around Hurricane Helene recovery (along with conspiracy theories and misinformation).
It's worth noting here that, while I heard this kind of thing largely from Trump supporters, it wasn’t exclusively a conservative issue. You’ll find plenty of liberals (and Libertarians, and unaffiliated or ecclectically-alligned folks) who have a hard time reconciling spending abroad — whether it’s foreign aid, diplomatic missions, or military spending – with unmet domestic needs like homelessness or healthcare.
I don’t say any of this to defend a retreat to isolationism or the chaotic dismantling of the United States’ agencies focused on its international role. As the letter above suggests, there’s a good case to be made for the United States to play a leading role on the world stage — but that argument is complex, nuanced, and multi-layered. And it’s hard to hear when you’re in economic pain, harder still when you’re in the thrall of what, at our most charitable, we might call populism.
