King County Airport Used To Deport 34,000 People, UW Study Finds
SEATTLE, WA — Federal records obtained by the University of Washington Center for Human Rights show that King County International Airport — also called Boeing Field — has been used as a hub for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportation flights over the last eight years.
About 34,400 people have left the airport on deportation flights since 2010, according to an ICE database. An average of 360 people are deported through the airport each month, but UW researchers have seen an upward trend since Donald Trump became president.
UW researchers said the flights raise human rights concerns because not much is known about conditions aboard the airplanes. The report also says that 2,615 immigrants flew out of the airport without seeing an immigration judge.
"But even absent acts of egregious physical violence, deportations from King County on raise the same human rights concerns as flights elsewhere in the country: they separate families, amplify the impacts of racial disproportionalities in policing, and may remand people to unsafe places," the report says.
ICE uses charter companies for the deportation flights, and the report cites Swift Air as one of the main ones. Some fly directly to countries like China and Mexico, but a majority fly to airports along the U.S.-Mexico border.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/king-county-airport-used-to-deport-34000-people-uw-study-finds/ar-BBWfuX9
