Healey directly calls on 2 airlines to end ICE collaboration

Local News

Gov. Maura Healey’s demands come after ICE expanded its operations at Hanscom Field in Bedford last year.

Gov. Maura Healey sent a letter to two private airline companies Thursday demanding that they stop assisting ICE in conducting deportation flights. 

Healey criticized ICE’s actions in Massachusetts for much of last year but now appears to be increasingly focused on how the agency is using charter flights to enact President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda. Last month, the governor demanded that ICE stop using Hanscom Field in Bedford for immigration enforcement flights. 

Healey’s letter was sent to top executives at GlobalX Airlines and Eastern Air Express, which she said are providing aircraft and personnel for ICE use at Hanscom. This, Healey said, allows ICE to “quickly remove residents and sever them from their family, friends, community, and legal counsel without due process of law.”

GlobalX describes itself as the nation’s “fastest growing charter airline.” The company is based in Miami. It has a fleet of 18 aircraft that are used by the federal government, sports teams, casinos, and tour operators, according to the company’s website. GlobalX took in $160 million in revenue in 2023. Eastern Airlines, a Kansas City-based company, acquired Hillwood Airways in 2023 and rebranded it as Eastern Air Express. 

Neither company responded to a request for comment Thursday. 

“Flying these residents out of state—often within hours of arrest—is intentionally cruel and purposely obstructs the due process and legal representation they are entitled to. By contracting with ICE to execute these flights, you are profiting off these anti-American tactics and facilitating the obstruction of due process,” Healey wrote. 

ICE does not own planes itself but contracts with an airline broker that then subcontracts to several airline carriers for the flights, according to the nonprofit Human Rights First. The organization maintains a detailed “ICE Flight Monitor.” ICE also utilizes Air Force and Coast Guard planes. 

Between Jan. 1 and Nov. 30, 2025, there were 114 ICE flights that departed from Hanscom, according to the group. This represents a 143% increase from the same period in 2024.

Healey was one of many Massachusetts leaders who expressed her outrage after learning about the shooting death of a woman in Minnesota at the hands of an ICE officer Wednesday. She referenced this incident in her letter to the airline executives, saying that it demonstrates how ICE’s tactics “are increasingly chaotic, brutal, and even deadly.” She pointed out that a “significant majority” of people detained by ICE in Massachusetts under the second Trump administration have no criminal convictions or charges against them. 

In the letter, Healey referenced news that broke this week about Avelo Airlines ending its collaboration with ICE amid a company-wide downsizing. The airline began working with the government in search of more financial stability but that partnership places it “in the center of political controversy,” Avelo’s CEO told employees, according to CNBC. 

The governor also made an economic argument in her letter. 

“On behalf of American taxpayers, I also find it incomprehensible that the Trump Administration is choosing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on private jets to obstruct people’s due process at a time when they are denying hunger benefits, cutting health care access, and raising costs on everyone through costly tariffs,” she wrote.