Tag: Avelo Airlines

Avelo to Exit Deportation Biz

by Thomas Breen, Jan. 7, 2026, New Haven Independent

Avelo Airlines plans to stop running deportation flights for the Trump administration later this month after deciding that its participation in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) program is too complex and costly to continue.

Photo: Chris Volpe

Avelo spokesperson Courtney Goff confirmed that coming move for the budget airline in an email comment sent to the Independent on Wednesday.

“Avelo will close the base at AZA [in Mesa, Arizona] on January 27 and will conclude participation in the DHS charter program,” Goff wrote. “The program provided short-term benefits

At an April 30 anti-Avelo protest at Tweed.

but ultimately did not deliver enough consistent and predictable revenue to overcome its operational complexity and costs.”

AZ Family, a local news outlet in Phoenix, first reported on Avelo’s decision to end its deportation flights, which began out of Arizona last May — prompting a New Haven-based boycott movement, condemnation from politicians and activists across the country, and frequent protests outside of Tweed New Haven Airport, where Avelo has been flying direct commercial flights (but not deportation flights) since November 2021.

“The big lesson here is that human suffering is not profitable,” said Pastor Jack Perkins Davidson of Hamden’s Spring Glen Church in a phone interview with the Independent Wednesday. “I hope Avelo and all corporations in the U.S. have learned that valuable lesson, that collaborating with injustice and collaborating with racism, though it may for them provide the allure of short-term gain, are empty promises. There is no benefit.”

[To read the article in its entirety, see https://bit.ly/3NsEIN2]

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.]