ICE deportation flights are getting longer and crueler

Just before being put on board her deportation flight, Melissa Tran’s wrists and ankles were shackled to a chain around her waist. It had been more than 10 hours since she’d been given any food or water; for the last seven, she had been sitting on a bus on the tarmac.

There was no company name or logo on the Boeing 767, but she soon learned the airline was called Omni Air International. She’d never heard of it, nor of Stonepeak, the private equity firm that purchased Omni in April 2025, nor of its billionaire CEO, who was an immigrant himself. She had no idea that Omni’s ICE work had quadrupled since the sale or that its flights were getting longer and, because of that, crueler.

There were 10 female deportees clustered in coach, with about 180 men seated behind. Tran noted a variety of accents and ethnicities and wondered how many stops were planned and how long she’d be shackled. When an ICE-contracted guard walked by, she asked about their flight time.

“Where are you from?” he responded. Vietnam, she said—though she hadn’t been there since her family fled when she was 10. The Maryland mother of four had long put a 2001 theft conviction behind her, becoming a health care worker and small-business owner, but at an ICE check-in three days earlier, she was arrested and flown to detention in Alexandria, Louisiana.

The guard winced: “Sorry, you’re the last stop.” He told her she wouldn’t arrive in Hanoi until Thursday. It was Monday night in Louisiana.