La Resistencia has been witnessing the flights and counting how many detainees come and go.
KING COUNTY, Wash. — In December 2024, a federal judge ruled deportation flights could continue at Boeing Field. King County’s then-executive Dow Constantine made a 2019 order suspending deportation flights, and after litigation, flights resumed at the King County International Airport in May 2023. Then in December 2024, a federal appeals court judge ruled the flights could continue. Since then, the flights have increased in frequency.
On Tuesday, April 8th, a GlobalX flight was parked at Boeing Field. Tucked in between a few of the businesses that line the sides of the King County International Airport, the 50 detainees who were loaded onto the plane were out of sight from the public.
However, after then-King County Executive Dow Constantine signed an executive order demanding more transparency around these deportation flights, a livestream view has been set up. The link is available to the public online. They stream the video at the airport itself, in case the public wants to view.
That Tuesday, the detainees were patted down and had their hands shackled to their waist and ankles shackled wide enough to accommodate going up the stairs one at a time.
The footage has no audio, but videos from around the country, including this one from the White House on social media demonstrate what it sounds like.
These flights—central to Trump’s mass deportation policy—happen nationwide, including in our own backyard.
“We don’t know what day they are exactly deporting people, we are there to witness,” Liliana Chumpitasi said. Chumpitasi, along with Rufina Reyes, runs La Resistencia, a social justice nonprofit. La Resistencia tracks all deportation flights in and out of King County International.
When they’re not at the airport, they’re often at the Northwest ICE Processing Facility in Tacoma, where people are imprisoned on immigration violations.
Reyes said there’s been a surge in flights taking people away from and also bringing them in to Boeing Field.
“We can see how the people is coming, how many people is coming and also the conditions on the flights,” Reyes said.
Phil Neff, is a research coordinator at the University of Washington Center for Human Rights. His team documented what happens aboard these ICE flights over the years. Their 2016 report, “Hidden in Plain Sight” exposed multiple human rights violations against detainees.
“There are reports of people who have been shackled for more than 24 hours, not allowed to use restrooms, forced to relieve themselves on themselves while in shackles,” Neff said.
“Some people need a wheelchair, just– they take it off,” Chumpitasi said. “We need to be witnesses about it, and also to go public on the situation. That’s why we are observing for now, but we want to do more.”
Documents obtained by the UW Center for Human Rights through a Freedom of Information Act request show:
A deportation flight grounded in Senegal had people shackled for 46 hours– not given adequate food or water– denied access to bathrooms, forcing them to urinate on themselves.
Refusals to board flights ended up in beatings– “An officer putting his boot on the detainee’s face and smashing his face into the ground.”
In 2012– an El Salvadorian woman warned ICE of her high-risk pregnancy but was deported anyway. She “began bleeding during the flight and miscarried her triplets when her plane landed in El Salvador.”
“I think it’s a safe assumption that reporting of abuses on deportation flights is underreported, given that people have very few mechanisms by which to make those reports,” Neff added.
Outside of the Northwest ICE processing facility in Tacoma on Saturday, La Resistencia and other nonprofits stood their ground.
La Resistencia remains vigilant and vocal for those inside who cannot speak out.
“We see the conditions, how hard it is in this place, because they don’t have the capacity to have a lot of people,” Reyes said. “Everybody needs to call their senators and take action on this place, because it’s terrible. It’s like a concentration camp.”
King County’s Deportation flights livestream link is here: https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/executive-services/transit-transportation-roads/airport/about/ice-flights
The livestream begins approximately one hour before the scheduled arrival of a flight, and is deactivated after departure.
