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THREAD: Last year, ProPublica started receiving tips from an unusual kind of source: flight attendants. They said they'd worked on deportation flights for ICE, and they could tell us what it was really like on board. 1/

Most of the flight attendants hadn't knowingly signed up to help deport people. They knew a lot about a topic of great national interest, but they weren’t talking politics—just about what they experienced. There's something trustworthy, to me, about third-party witnesses like this. 2/

I eventually spoke with seven current and former Global Crossing Airlines crew members. Their accounts were consistent with one another and aligned with what’s in legal filings and other records about ICE Air—important because neither GlobalX nor ICE answered any of ProPublica's questions. 3/

The flight attendants said that when they took jobs with the charter company, they'd expected they'd be flying VIP's and sun-seekers to glamorous locales. Then the airline started working for ICE, and many or most of their passengers were detainees, people in chains. 4/

Their training classes hadn't prepared them for this, they told me. One flight attendant said: “They never taught us anything regarding the immigration flights... They didn’t tell us these people were going to be shackled, wrists to fucking ankles.” 5/

The flight attendants said there were new rules to follow, though: •Don’t talk to the detainees. •Don’t feed them. •Don’t make eye contact. •Don’t walk down the aisles without a guard escorting you. •Don’t sit in aisle seats, where detainees could get close to you. 6/

One of the flight attendants described needing to give emergency oxygen to a little girl who was traveling with her mom and dad on a deportation flight. The girl had collapsed with low oxygen saturation and a high fever, and the flight was diverted back to the US. But when paramedics rushed on… 7/

... only the mom was allowed to join the little girl as they took her to the hospital, the flight attendant said. The flight attendant said the dad had to stay, and that he was going to be deported without the rest of his family, without knowing if his daughter would live. 8/

Three flight attendants said they did get some rare guidance on how to run evacuations on deportation flights from ICE Air pilots. “Just get up and leave” after you open the exit door, one recalls a pilot telling him. “That’s it... Save your life first." 9/

Though we didn’t hear from GlobalX, then-CEO Ed Wegel did address deportation flights in a 2023 earnings call. “In the time that we've been flying, we've not seen any inhumane treatment,” he said. "There have been threats made to our crew members... But we haven't seen any mistreatment at all.” 11/

I’d like to know the extent of campaign contributions of GlobalX CEO Ed Wegel and other people and corporations like his that profit like this off of Trumps anti immigrant misery and fascism.

www.globalxetfs.com/about/ Ryan Oconnor is their new CEO Edwegel left last year

MAGA is a Terrorist Organization , ICE is a Secret Police Force Conducting Ethnic Cleansing , Elon Musk is an Oligarch the US has many , Trump is a Foreign Backed COUP Figurehead "Useful Idiot" .. This is not an Administration , This is a Regime , And the USA is "Occupied" ..

It’s just a matter of time before US born citizens get stuck on these flights. It’s the classic “there was no one to stand up for me” strategy. Lawyers, courts, LEO, media—all bending the knee.

Professi-washing: it's the trumpian form of gas-lighting, bullshitting and outright lying to convince us that there is nothing to see here.... We must start trusting our own eyes and gut instincts.

This is horrific, but it sounds like a lot of the bad stuff was maybe already happening during the Biden administration?

if people have no avenues to register a complaint about mistreatment then officially it didn't happen Only resistance happens officially because the guards have opportunities to formally report their victims for swearing at them or whatever

This is so disturbing. I knew we weren’t the most humane country during our relatively short history, but boy I didn’t know the depth of our inhumanity. I’m sickened.

How do we find out what pro sports teams or musical artists are charting the planes not deporting people? Maybe a little sunshine there would be useful.

We've lost our soul as a nation.

https://youtu.be/qu-duTWccyI?feature=shared

The first thing the new president needs to do is abolish ICE and arrest and try those who acted against the constitution. If we have to protest in the streets until these Nazis are tried, we need to. This can NEVER BE FORGOTTEN.