by Dereen Shirnekhi The New Haven independent
Organizers Anne Watkins, Meg Graustein, and Hope Chávez on Burr Street.
(Updated) New Haven critics of President Donald Trump’s deportation policies began a day-long vigil outside Tweed Airport Monday as Avelo Airlines was scheduled to start flying deportees out of another airport, in Arizona.
Those “removal” flights sparked outrage in early April when Avelo Airlines announced a new position for a full-time flight attendant, to be based out of Mesa, Arizona. The posting came with a disclaimer that the job “is for a charter program for the Department of Homeland Security. Flights will be both domestic and international trips to support DHS’s deportation efforts.”
The decision to partner with the federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which Avelo CEO Andrew Levy has defended as a way to offset financial troubles stemming from stiffer passenger-travel competition at Tweed, has faced public condemnations here in New Haven, a main hub for Avelo flights, from Mayor Justin Elicker, the Board of Alders, and State Sen. and President Pro Tem Martin Looney. It has also sparked a war of words (and Freedom of Information Act requests) between Avelo CEO Andrew Levy and state Attorney General William Tong, and multiple protests.
Monday’s vigil began at 6 a.m. and is scheduled to end at 6 p.m., with organizers taking shifts. Around 9 a.m., Anne Watkins stood at the Burr Street entrance of Tweed New Haven Airport with fellow attendees Hope Chávez and Meg Graustein. Music played from a wireless speaker, and the crew sipped from Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cups amid posters and signs reading “NO ICE FLIGHTS” and “STOP Supporting Family Separation.”
Chávez noted that protests are happening at other Avelo hubs Monday, too. She said she and the other New Haven organizers wanted to create something where people could come and go as they pleased, “to add to this vigil and to this roadside memorial” of lives that have been impacted by “lack-of-due-process removals and mourning those who are to come.”
“We’re being very careful not to use the word ‘deportation’ because in many cases people are actually not being deported, they’re not being taken back to their country of origin to live their life there,” she said. “They are being removed to prisons in other countries without access to legal representation or any form of due process. … That’s what makes this particularly horrendous.”
While the Independent has not received confirmation that Avelo has begun chartering deportation flights out of Mesa, Ariz., flight tracking site flightaware.com indicates that Avelo Airlines flight XP48 took off from Phoenix-Mesa Gateway at 8:15 a.m. MST Monday. That flight is set to land at Alexandria International Airport in Alexandria, Louisiana, at 12:28 p.m. CDT. Migrants have previously been transported to an international airport in Alexandria, Louisiana before being deported from the U.S. The airport is the site of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention and removal staging facility.
In response to a request for comment about Monday’s vigil at Tweed, Avelo spokesperson Courtney Goff said, “The safety and well-being of our Crewmembers (employees), Customers and all individuals involved is our highest priority. While we recognize the right of individuals to peacefully assemble, Avelo’s main priority will continue to be maintaining the safety and timeliness of our operation.”
She also confirmed that Avelo’s contract with DHS begins on Monday.
Goff redirected all specific questions about the flights to take place out of Arizona to DHS.
“Andrew Levy, Avelo’s CEO, has said that New Haven will benefit from their contract with DHS and with ICE because their finances will be better,” Watkins said. “We disagree.”
Chávez said that it is impossible for Levy to remove himself and Avelo from the reality of President Trump’s policies. “You may very well be participating in illegal removals. They can’t make that choice once they sign that contract, they can’t say, ‘This person, not that person.’”
At one point, a passing driver honked in support of the vigil and raised a thumbs up from the inside of his truck.
Chávez said that organizations like CT Shoreline Indivisible, New Haven Indivisible, and Unidad Latina en Acción (ULA) are scheduled to participate in demonstrations later on Monday.
Anything to say to those flying Avelo on Monday?
“I have a lot of empathy for folks who, for numerous reasons, this may be the only accessible airline to them,” Chávez said. She doesn’t want to shame anyone who can’t buy another ticket or fly another airline to see their family, she said. “But for everyone who has the capacity, everyone who has the means and the privilege, and chooses not to redistribute their funding to fly Breeze [Airlines] or fly out of Bradley [International Airport] — they’re complicit in this too.”
Boycotting, she said, is one of the ways anyone dissatisfied with Avelo can make their voice known. She noted that Tweed’s board has stated that they won’t take a position, and so “the only way for us to have a sustained meaningful impact is to affect their bottom line.”
“If the only funding they can get in the door is this DHS money and they can’t sell tickets out of Tweed, they will go away,” Chávez said.
Mona Mahadevan contributed to this report. This article has been updated with a comment from Avelo, with a confirmation that Monday is the start of Avelo’s deportation contract with DHS, and with information from flightaware.com about Avelo’s Monday morning flight from Arizona to Louisiana.