Anti-Avelo ICE Deportation Flight Protests Spread from New Haven

by Mark Zaretsky, May 18, 2025, New Haven Register

It’s not just a few dozen people in New Haven or Connecticut anymore who are upset about Avelo Airlines running deportation shuttles for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

It’s grown into a national movement, with its own newly-minted national coalition, which recently held its first national online meeting.

On Monday [May 12], the day Avelo began running ICE charters from Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport in Mesa, Ariz., more than 100 people rallied outside Tweed New Haven Regional Airport, Avelo’s oldest and largest East Coast base.

At the same time, about 30 people gathered on a road leading to the Mesa airport, holding signs that denounced the Trump Administration’s deportation efforts, according to the Associated Press.

[To read the New Haven Register article in its entirety, please go to https://bit.ly/4jeRjxz. For additional coverage and photos, please see Lucy Gellman’s article of May 13 in Arts Paper at bit.ly/4dw4mJJ.]