Quentin Young
Posted November 6, 2025
The perpetrators of federal immigration enforcement under the Trump administration are allergic to transparency.
The most widely recognized symptom of this condition is their habit of masking up. The face-covering gaiter has quickly become a shameful icon for Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers who’ve terrorized countless communities across Colorado and the country.
But ICE and its partners in the lawless implementation of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation program mask up in other ways. As Newsline reporter Sara Wilson recently discovered, the numerous daily flights that crisscross the country to transport immigrants are difficult to track.
That’s by design.
The flights are run by ICE, which transports people to immigration detention hubs and out of the country to deport them. The operation balloons the catastrophe of detention by putting whole states between family members and undercutting the ability of detainees to seek legal help.
Think of how a normal criminal prosecution works. A person is arrested on suspicion of violating the law by uniformed, identifiable police officers. That person is booked at a local facility and possibly jailed, but in many cases they have the opportunity to secure pre-trial release, and in all cases they’re given access to legal representation.
Compare that to how faceless, unaccountable immigration officers grab residents off the street and whisk them to locations unknown to family and friends. Most people whom ICE arrests in Colorado have no criminal conviction or charge, and that tracks with the national trend. Despite constitutional rights that are supposed to protect them, they have little expectation of due process or access to legal representation.
ICE flights are a major component of this injustice.
Wilson reported that Colorado-based Key Lime Air, which many customers know as Denver Air Connection, in mid-September started running daily flights of detainees for ICE. Key Lime is the first known Colorado-based company to participate in ICE Air, the agency’s program of removal and domestic transfer flights on charter and commercial airlines.
ICE leaders want to mask the agency’s detention flights for the same reason its officers want to mask their faces: Their behavior is inhumane and indefensible.
Key Lime aircraft shuttle detainees around the country, and they frequent ICE detention hubs, particularly El Paso and Harlingen in Texas, and Alexandria, Louisiana. As part of reporting the story, Newsline journalists observed dozens of detainees exit and enter Key Lime aircraft with their hands and feet shackled.
The reporting didn’t come easy. The Key Lime planes that perform ICE Air work are devoid of company logos. The company appears to have blocked the planes’ registration numbers from at least one popular flight tracking website. When they started ferrying detainees they stopped using the Key Lime flight communication call sign, “LYM.”
Federal authorities communicate very little about the flights. We don’t know the identity of the passengers. And Key Lime was no help. Wilson had a door shut in her face at Key Lime headquarters at Centennial Airport, and when she got CEO Cliff Honeycutt on the phone he quickly ended the conversation.
Much of what is known about ICE flights comes from independent trackers, like Washington-based La Resistencia, and immigration advocates. The New York Times relied on a flight database created by refugee advocate Tom Cartwright when it published an investigation into the Alexandria deportation hub. The Guardian’s investigation into the hub, which features a detention center on the airport tarmac, found “a pattern of alleged due process violations … neglect and abuse, documented health emergencies and long stays.”
“There is almost no legal access to the center,” the Guardian reported.
ICE leaders want to mask the agency’s detention flights for the same reason its officers want to mask their faces: Their behavior is inhumane and indefensible. And the result is the same: Malign government agents defy transparency and accountability.
But the work of advocates and journalists like Wilson exposes much about the true face of ICE Air.
Quentin Young is the editor of Colorado Newsline. This commentary is republished from Colorado Newsline under a Creative Commons license. Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
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