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Budget airline begins deportation flights for ICE with start of Arizona operations
Court Watch |
2025/05/13 00:53
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A budget airline that serves mostly small U.S. cities began federal deportation flights Monday out of Arizona, a move that’s inspired an online boycott petition and sharp criticism from the union representing the carrier’s flight attendants.
Avelo Airlines announced in April it had signed an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security to make charter deportation flights from Mesa Gateway Airport outside Phoenix. It said it will use three Boeing 737-800 planes for the flights.
The Houston-based airline is among a host of companies seeking to cash in on President Donald Trump’s campaign for mass deportations.
Congressional deliberations began last month on a tax bill with a goal of funding, in part, the removal of 1 million immigrants annually and housing 100,000 people in U.S. detention centers. The GOP plan calls for hiring 10,000 more U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and investigators.
Avelo was launched in 2021 as COVID-19 still raged and billions of taxpayer dollars were propping up big airlines. It saves money mainly by flying older Boeing 737 jets that can be bought at relatively low prices. And it operates out of less-crowded and less-costly secondary airports, flying routes that are ignored by the big airlines. It said it had its first profitable quarter in late 2023.
Andrew Levy, Avelo’s founder and chief executive, said in announcing the agreement last month that the airline’s work for ICE would help the company expand and protect jobs.
“We realize this is a sensitive and complicated topic,” said Levy, an airline industry veteran with previous stints as a senior executive at United and Allegiant airlines.
Financial and other details of the Avelo agreement — including destinations of the deportation flights — haven’t publicly surfaced. The AP asked Avelo and ICE for a copy of the agreement, but neither provided the document. The airline said it wasn’t authorized to release the contract.
Several consumer brands have shunned being associated with deportations, a highly volatile issue that could drive away customers. During Trump’s first term, authorities housed migrant children in hotels, prompting some hotel chains to say that they wouldn’t participate.
Avelo was launched in 2021 as COVID-19 still raged and billions of taxpayer dollars were propping up big airlines. It saves money mainly by flying older Boeing 737 jets that can be bought at relatively low prices. And it operates out of less-crowded and less-costly secondary airports, flying routes that are ignored by the big airlines. It said it had its first profitable quarter in late 2023.
Andrew Levy, Avelo’s founder and chief executive, said in announcing the agreement last month that the airline’s work for ICE would help the company expand and protect jobs. |
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Judge to weigh Louisiana AG’s challenge to city jail’s ‘sanctuary’ policy
Court Watch |
2025/04/30 13:33
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Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill is pushing forward with her efforts to force Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson to drop a longtime policy that generally prohibits deputies from directly engaging in federal immigration enforcement within the city’s jail.
In legal filings, Murrill claims that the policy — which the state characterizes as a so-called “sanctuary city” policy — is in direct conflict with a newly passed state law that requires state and local law enforcement agencies to cooperate with federal immigration agencies.
“The consent decree now sits fundamentally at odds with state law as applicable to immigration detainers,” Murrill said in court documents filed Friday.
A federal court will now determine whether to allow the state of Louisiana to join a 2011 federal suit that resulted in the policy and whether to throw out the policy altogether. A hearing has been set for April 30.
The state’s campaign against “sanctuary” policies comes as President Donald Trump is pushing local law enforcement agencies to join the federal government in his promised immigration crackdown. Since his inauguration, Trump has ordered the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to push for more partnerships between local law enforcement units and federal immigration agencies. A few have already signed up. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a longtime immigration hardliner and Trump ally, has worked with Republican lawmakers in the state to enact laws that encourage those collaborations.
As attorney general, Landry criticized a policy adopted by the New Orleans Police Department, under a long-running federal consent decree that blocks officers from enforcing immigration laws.
Neither Murrill’s office nor representatives for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement responded to requests for comment.
In court filings, Murrill said Hutson “does not oppose the (state’s) intervention” in the case.” But a spokesperson for Hutson said that’s not exactly true. “It’s more accurate that we take no position regarding the state intervention,” a Sheriff’s Office spokesperson said in an emailed statement on Wednesday.
While she has not taken a position for or against increased collaboration with ICE, in an interview with Fox 8 in December, Hutson noted that the jail’s resources were far too stretched to take on immigration enforcement.
The sheriff’s policy stems from a 2013 federal court settlement in a civil rights case involving two New Orleans construction workers picked up on minor charges in 2009 and 2010. Mario Cacho and Antonio Ocampo sued after they were allegedly illegally held in the city’s jail past the completion of their sentences. The two were held at the request of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The agency issues such “detainer” requests to local law enforcement agencies, asking them to hold onto arrestees who are suspected of immigration violations. Local agencies are only supposed to honor the hold requests for 48 hours, after which they should let detainees free. But in 2009 and 2010, then-Sheriff Marlin Gusman detained Cacho and Ocampo for months, according to legal filings in their case against the office.
Ocampo and Cacho settled the case with the Sheriff’s Office in 2013, and Gusman agreed to adopt a new policy on immigration investigations. The resulting policy blocks the agency from investigating immigration violations
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Hungary welcomes Netanyahu and announces it’s quitting top war crimes court
Court Watch |
2025/04/05 17:58
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Hungary will start the process to withdraw from the International Criminal Court, an official said Thursday, just as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived to red carpet treatment in the country’s capital despite an arrest warrant from the world’s only permanent global tribunal for war crimes and genocide.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán gave the Israeli leader a welcome with full military honors in Budapest’s Castle District. The two close allies stood side by side as a military band played and an elaborate procession of soldiers on horseback and carrying swords and bayoneted rifles marched by.
As the ceremony unfolded, Orbán’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyás, released a brief statement saying that “the government will initiate the withdrawal procedure” for leaving the court, which could take a year or more to complete. Netanyahu’s visit to Hungary, which is scheduled to last until Sunday, was only his second foreign trip since the ICC issued the warrant against him in November.
The ICC, based in The Hague, Netherlands, said when issuing its warrant that there was reason to believe Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant had committed crimes against humanity in connection with the war in Gaza.
The war began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages, most of whom have since been released in ceasefire agreements and other deals. Israel rescued eight living hostages and has recovered dozens of bodies.
Israel’s offensive has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t say whether those killed are civilians or combatants. Israel says it has killed around 20,000 militants, without providing evidence. Israeli military’s response resumed last month, shattering a ceasefire.
After the ICC issued the warrant, Orbán invited Netanyahu to Budapest, and accused the court of “interfering in an ongoing conflict for political purposes.” That invitation was in open defiance of the court’s ruling and contradicted Hungary’s obligations as a signatory to arrest any suspects facing a warrant if they set foot on their soil.
All countries in the 27-member European Union, including Hungary, are signatories, but the court relies on member countries to enforce its rulings. Hungary joined the court in 2001 during Orbán’s first term as prime minister.
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Military veterans are becoming the face of Trump’s government cuts
Court Watch |
2025/03/17 19:47
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As congressional lawmakers scramble to respond to President Donald Trump’s slashing of the federal government, one group is already taking a front and center role: military veterans.
From layoffs at the Department of Veterans Affairs to a Pentagon purge of archives that documented diversity in the military, veterans have been acutely affected by Trump’s actions. And with the Republican president determined to continue slashing the federal government, the burden will only grow on veterans, who make up roughly 30% of the federal workforce and often tap government benefits they earned with their military service.
“At a moment of crisis for all of our veterans, the VA’s system of health care and benefits has been disastrously and disgracefully put on the chopping block by the Trump administration,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, at a news conference last week.
Most veterans voted for Trump last year — nearly 6 in 10, according to AP Votecast, a nationwide survey of more than 120,000 voters. Yet congressional Republicans are standing in support of Trump’s goals even as they encounter fierce pushback in their home districts. At a series of town halls this week, veterans angrily confronted Republican members as they defended the cuts made under Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
“Do your job!” Jay Carey, a military veteran, yelled at Republican Rep. Chuck Edwards at a town hall in North Carolina.
“I’m a retired military officer,” an attendee at another forum in Wyoming told Republican Rep. Harriet Hageman before questioning whether DOGE had actually discovered any “fraud.”
Although Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson advised his members to skip the town halls and claimed that they were being filled with paid protesters, some Republicans were still holding them and trying to respond to the criticism.
“It looks radical, but it’s not. I call it stewardship, in my opinion,” Republican Rep. Gus Bilirakis of Florida said on a tele-town hall. “I think they’re doing right by the American taxpayer. And I support that principle of DOGE.”
Still, some Republicans have expressed unease with the seemingly indiscriminate firings of veterans, especially when they have not been looped in on the administration’s plans. At a town hall on Friday, Texas Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw told the audience, “We’re learning about this stuff at the speed of light, the way you are. I think there’s been some babies thrown out with the bath water here, but we’re still gathering information on it.”
Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL, added, “If you’re doing a job that we need you to do, you’re doing it well, yeah, we’ve got to fight for you.”
The Republican chair of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, Rep. Mike Bost, assured listeners on a tele-town hall last week that he and Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins are talking regularly. As the VA implements plans to cut roughly 80,000 jobs, Bost has said he is watching the process closely, but he has expressed support and echoed Collins’ assurances that veterans’ health care and benefits won’t be slashed.
“They’ve cut a lot, but understand this: Essential jobs are not being cut,” Bost said, but then added that his office was helping alert the VA when people with essential jobs had in fact been terminated.
Two federal judges this month ordered the Trump administration to rehire the probationary employees who were let go in the mass firings. At the VA, some of those employees have now been put on administrative leave, but a sense of dread and confusion is still hanging over much of the federal workforce.
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Musk gives all federal workers 48 hours to explain what they did last week
Court Watch |
2025/02/23 18:04
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Hundreds of thousands of federal workers have been given little more than 48 hours to explain what they accomplished over the last week, sparking confusion across key agencies as billionaire Elon Musk expands his crusade to slash the size of federal government.
Musk, who serves as President Donald Trump’s cost-cutting chief, telegraphed the extraordinary request on his social media network on Saturday.
“Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” Musk posted on X, which he owns. “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
Shortly afterward, federal employees — including some judges, court staff and federal prison officials — received a three-line email with this instruction: “Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager.”
The deadline to reply was listed as Monday at 11:59 p.m., although the email did not include Musk’s social media threat about those who fail to respond.
The latest unusual directive from Musk’s team injects a new sense of chaos across beleaguered multiple agencies, including the National Weather Service, the State Department and the federal court system, as senior officials worked to verify the message’s authenticity Saturday night and in some cases, instructed their employees not to respond.
Thousands of government employees have already been forced out of the federal workforce — either by being fired or offered a buyout — during the first month of Trump’s administration as the White House and Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency fire both new and career workers, tell agency leaders to plan for “large-scale reductions in force” and freeze trillions of dollars in federal grant funds.
There is no official figure available for the total firings or layoffs so far, but The Associated Press has tallied hundreds of thousands of workers who are being affected. Many work outside of Washington. The cuts include thousands at the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Defense, Health and Human Services, the Internal Revenue Service and the National Parks Service, among others.
Labor union leaders quickly condemned the ultimatum and threatened legal action.
AFGE President Everett Kelley called the new order an example of Trump and Musk’s “utter disdain for federal employees and the critical services they provide to the American people.”
“It is cruel and disrespectful to hundreds of thousands of veterans who are wearing their second uniform in the civil service to be forced to justify their job duties to this out-of-touch, privileged, unelected billionaire who has never performed one single hour of honest public service in his life,” Kelley said. “AFGE will challenge any unlawful terminations of our members and federal employees across the country.”
Musk on Friday celebrated his new role at a gathering of conservatives by waving a giant chainsaw in the air. He called it “the chainsaw for bureaucracy” and said, “Waste is pretty much everywhere” in the federal government.
McLaurine Pinover, a spokesperson at the Office of Personnel Management, confirmed Musk’s directive and said that individual agencies would “determine any next steps.”
What happens if an employee is on leave or vacation? Again, she said individual agencies would determine how to proceed.
In a message to employees on Saturday night, federal court officials instructed recipients not to respond.
“We understand that some judges and judiciary staff have received an email ... directing the recipient to reply with 5 accomplishments from the prior week. Please be advised that this email did not originate from the Judiciary or the Administrative Office and we suggest that no action be taken,” officials wrote.
Judges around the country got emails from Musk’s team in late January, apparently by mistake, U.S. District Judge Randolph Daniel Moss said earlier this month. Moss said he’d also gotten a message and ignored it.
The National Weather Service leadership acknowledged some confusion in a message to its employees late Saturday as well.
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