MINNEAPOLIS – Nick Benson stands tucked out of the cold inside an elevator terminal at the Minneapolis-St. Paul international, looking out a window at the tarmac. Commercial airplanes dart by, but one chartered flight sits parked away from the gates, a set of stairs pulled up to its open door.
Dressed in a plaid button up, the 41-year-old leans into a digital camera on a tripod, with a long telephoto lens pointed toward that plane, and slowly counts.
"So that's one for today so far," he says quietly. "And there's number two at the top of the steps."
Benson is counting people, as they hobble out of a mini bus, up the steps and onto the plane.
These immigration detainees, their hands and feet shackled, are being flown out of Minnesota, caught up in President Trump's sweeping federal immigration campaign that started in Minneapolis back in December. The administration has touted it as the largest operation ever.
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Federally chartered deportation flights on ICE Air, as the Department of Homeland Security calls it, aren't new. They were happening under the Biden administration as well. But in Trump's second term, their frequency and scope has essentially doubled, according to ICE Flight Monitor, an advocacy initiative that keeps watch. The flights have also become increasingly harder to track, and information or data about the passengers is difficult to get. That's where observers like Benson have stepped in.
Today's plane will head to Texas.
"It's just happening in the background," says Benson, motioning to the rest of the airport. "Here you could be sitting in the Delta lounge eating your cheese and crackers, and you wouldn't have even noticed that that was anything unusual going on out the window."
Benson is a professional airplane enthusiast. He runs an app to let other enthusiasts know where to see unusual planes coming and going from airports.
But in recent months, he's started tracking these ICE flights in and out of Minneapolis, counting the people loaded on as they are forced to leave the state.
"The count is what is important to me, because there's no other source of quantitative data with respect to what's actually going on," he says.
The federal government could be a source, but the Trump administration has been opaque about data in its immigration enforcement operations.
NPR requested the number of people detained and flown out of Minnesota in recent months from the Department of Homeland Security. Instead, DHS responded saying that 3,500 arrests had been made during the operation, without offering specifics, and did not say where those people were sent.
"President Trump and Secretary (Kristi) Noem are putting the American people first by removing illegal aliens who pose a threat to our communities," DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in an emailed statement.
The lack of transparency is one of the reasons Benson, along with others in the Minneapolis-based activist group MN50501, has started keeping detailed spreadsheets of every flight he can – 42 in January alone.
"This was just one of the best ways that I could be a helper, and I'm glad that I'm here to be able to do it," he says.
Benson has a wife and three kids. He works full-time running his app. But he often drops everything with just one or two hours notice, to get to this spot and observe.
The final count for today is 19 people. Other days, it's been more than 100.
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The airplane door is closed, the steps are pulled away, and eventually Benson watches as the flight takes off.
"Another sobering moment in a never-ending chain of sobering moments here," he says, looking out the window.
Benson estimates that 2,339 people were flown out of Minnesota like this in January, when flights began happening daily, sometimes twice a day.
"That is extremely valuable. That is not something we can track," says Savi Arvey, who oversees ICE Flight Monitor, an initiative by Human Rights First, an advocacy group that has been logging these kinds of flights by DHS for several years, across the country and the world.
Arvey's team has a good handle on tracking the flights themselves, but they don't have any visibility to who is actually on board the aircraft – which is where observers on the ground, like Benson, come in.
"Knowing that someone is there, counting the number of people and observing what is going on as people are boarded onto those flights is really essential," Arvey says.
Many immigration lawyers and advocates have noted that detainees are often whisked to the airport quickly, sometimes 24 to 48 hours after being detained, especially here in Minneapolis – something made possible with daily flights.
"What worries us the most is that people are being put on these flights without due process," says Arvey. "Without the chance, oftentimes, to have their asylum claim heard before an immigration judge. People are being put on these flights to be deported, who had their temporary protected status revoked."
Trump administration officials have been open about plans to increase operations of ICE Air to facilitate the mass deportations promised on the campaign trail. In December, DHS inked a contract to buy six 737s, to start its own fleet according to the Washington Post.
Back at his home, Benson pours over his spreadsheets, which details each flight: the time, date, tail number, airline. And, of course, the number of passengers.
He says sometimes the weight of what he's witnessing each day catches up with him.
"These people, when they're hobbling up the steps in chains, a lot of them are pausing for a moment at the top of the steps, and they're taking a look around, and I can't even imagine what they're thinking," he says.
But, Benson says he's going to keep doing it.
"I think it's the most important work that I'm ever going to get an opportunity to do," he says, starting to tear up a bit. "But I really wish I didn't have to."
And then he looks at his watch. Another flight is coming in soon.
Nick Benson grabs his tripod and his camera, and heads out the door to count.
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