The activist group La Resistencia estimates about 400 people have been deported on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, flights from Washington state since May. Most of the flights have left from Boeing Field after a court order issued in March forced King County to allow it. But ICE has also continued to use the Yakima airport for deportation flights.
Jaime Vera, the operations manager for Yakima Air Terminal, said he's not sure why. He said it might be because ICE wants to maintain its relationship with the airport, or because it’s not always possible to fly out of Boeing Field. Vera said he anticipates seeing ICE flights going through there every two to three months.
ICE previously said operating deportation flights out of Yakima is more costly and comes with safety risks since it is located about 150 miles from the ICE detention center in Tacoma.
In a statement Wednesday, David Yost, a spokesperson for ICE, said that flights are scheduled based on the agency’s needs “to repatriate foreign nationals subject to final orders of removal. These flights may include subjects who have failed to comply with final orders of removal, security risks, or other risk factors.”
“Based on this criteria, different means of efficient transportation that prioritize detainee safety and security may be used to fulfill a final order of removal, to include use of Boeing Field or Yakima Air Terminal,” Yost said.
In 2019, King County Executive Dow Constantine banned deportation flights from operating out of Boeing Field after a report from the University of Washington Center for Human Rights revealed that at least 34,400 detainees had been deported from the airport in the last eight years. However, the ban did not stand. Following a court order, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement began flying immigrants in and out of the county’s airport again in May.
There have been at least 11 ICE flights at Boeing Field since May. La Resistencia estimates there have been two deportation flights from Yakima over the last three months.
