The number of ICE flights is skyrocketing – but the planes are harder to track

https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/13/politics/ice-flights-locations-tracking-maps

by JKCalhoun • 11 months ago

71 29 11 months ago

Stratoscope• 11 months ago

rootsudo• 11 months ago

So it's interesting - this isn't new if you're in aviation, the redditors on /r/flying, /r/aviation, etc basically summed this up but it's just interesting that the floor to post an article is what is presented here. Just eerie the closer you are to a subject the more you see through the news.

But basically, yeah if you also go on the pilot facebook groups, you'd see alot of gossip about the flights happening and such too.

JKCalhoun2• 11 months ago

See through the news how? You mean that the pilot FB groups were aware of this irregularity before the press brought it to a wider audience?

cadamsdotcom• 11 months ago

Seems to be working.

Journalism picking up something interesting/important from obscurity and bringing it to the attention of a larger audience.

Seems like a very good thing.

Hikikomori• 11 months ago

Buy 1 way ticket, get free return ride, subscribe for more travel hacks.

telesilla• 11 months ago

But the hotel really was a let-down.

shortrounddev23• 11 months ago

Does it seem like hacktivism is at an all time low? In the 2010s there were a lot of groups calling themselves anonymous which attacked petty tyrants at the state and local level who were trying to cover up crimes. Now we're diving headfirst into a fascist takeover of American government and it feels like the only hackers you hear of anymore are criminals or state actors from eastern europe

woodpanel4• 11 months ago

a lot of groups calling themselves anonymous

That is of course one way to put it. Antoher would be to consider these groups part of the "intelligence community".

shortrounddev23• 11 months ago

I dont see why the IC would do some of these things. Like the Steubenville rape case, for example

input_sh• 11 months ago

Just because you don't hear about them doesn't mean they do not exist, with DDoSecrets (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_Denial_of_Secrets) pretty much taking over the role that WikiLeaks had 15 years ago.

Although I'd say it's kinda true that they're far more interested in attacking Russia and Israel these days than they are attacking the US.

shortrounddev23• 11 months ago

If they're targeting Russia, then they're playing the opposite role that Wikileaks did

jonathanlb• 11 months ago

If ICE, subcontractors, and the federal government and are doing nothing wrong, why do they need to hide?

analognoise3• 11 months ago

Most Americans are against this crazy immigration stuff, so I think they’re trying to prevent future prosecutions for doing obviously illegal things.

Whoppertime• 11 months ago

It's like asking why a government that is supposedly subservient to its citizens has a system of Classification that prevents citizens from finding out what their government is doing

tiahura3• 11 months ago

Authorities’ dereliction of the duty to secure the border for decades is hard to fathom. There’s literally 40 years of deportation backlog.

That this program is frustrating goals of “La Resistencia” - the source for the article - is probably a sign that the program is a good one.

kubb3• 11 months ago

During Trump’s first administration, the total number of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. continued to rise.

I wonder what he needed all those illegal immigrants for…

tiahura3• 11 months ago

Getting caught up in personality soap opera politics is unhelpful. If you are either ‘for’ or ‘against’ Trump, aim higher.

To answer your question, recent comments by Trump suggest it was to mollify agriculture. Ag is going to face some serious labor supply issues and it would probably be wise for the administration to work with them to ease the transition.

andsoitis• 11 months ago

Though flights have been a part of US immigration operation for years, the speed and scale of the ICE program today is unprecedented. Since Trump's inauguration, there have been more than 1,000 deportation flights to other countries, up 15% over the January to July period last year, according to Witness at Border.

What this is really saying: Trump administration continues long-standing US government policy (incl. previous Democratic administrations) of deporting flights , improving effectiveness by 15%.

A couple of questions arise for me:

a) is this a good policy?

b) is the execution being done in a legal manner (due process, etc.)?

c) why did the Democratic Party not advertise their immigration enforcement to the electorate, when that was probably the most foundational issue the opposition ran on?

woodpanel4• 11 months ago

Re c)

Propably a result of wheighing the options here: curbing the enthusiasm of your opponent's base vs. that of yours. You loose more of your own base than you're going to win from the opponents.

From this perspective, it can be quite logical why the DNC stayed silent about this. After luring your base in with "enforcing rule-of-law is racist"-rethoric, admitting to enforcing the law would be a bit of political suicide.

analognoise3• 11 months ago

Has anybody ever said “enforcing the rule of law is racist”?

This is America, we’ve had plenty of explicitly racist laws without a canard like this for “the Dems”.

woodpanel4• 11 months ago

With the rise of these tracking services a cat-and-mouse-situation was foreseeable all along, especially for security related type of flights.

Probably already happening for intelligence operations. I assume the obfuscation makes sense for deportation-flights, but one could argue that keeping it transparent would be a political win. So what might be the reason? Keeping the involved staff safe?

JKCalhoun2• 11 months ago

I'm not surprised this was flagged.

Forget ICE though, that this anonymity is allowed is rather frightening.

I'm predicting headlines in the coming years about drugs being flown into the U.S. under cover of ICE flights.

(Some of us can remember the drug flights in the 1980's that paid for arming the Nicaraguan Contras.)

soraminazuki• 11 months ago

That it's getting easier to delist flights from public trackers is a new development with far-reaching consequences that "good hackers would find interesting." It's on-topic as ever. The censorship efforts by some is getting out of control and needs to stop.

OutOfHere• 11 months ago

Considering there are 14 million illegal immigrants left in the US, and if 0.5 million new ones enter each year, Trump will have to deport 4 million each year if he wants them gone by the time his term is over. I think the rate is going to climb heavily from 1 million a year.

The number of ICE flights is skyrocketing – but the planes are harder to track

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