{"id":516845,"date":"2022-02-17T11:00:37","date_gmt":"2022-02-17T11:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/?p=386546"},"modified":"2022-02-17T11:00:37","modified_gmt":"2022-02-17T11:00:37","slug":"amazon-co-owns-deportation-airline-implicated-in-alleged-torture-of-immigrants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/02\/17\/amazon-co-owns-deportation-airline-implicated-in-alleged-torture-of-immigrants\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon Co-Owns Deportation Airline Implicated in Alleged Torture of Immigrants"},"content":{"rendered":"
As Amazon\u2019s dominance<\/u> of global e-commerce has grown, so has its vast fleet of vehicles shuttling packages from warehouse to doorstep around the world. To further expand its ballooning logistics empire, the company quietly became a partial owner of Air Transport Services Group Inc., a power player in the air cargo industry that has helped the United States forcibly deport thousands of migrants and, its passengers allege, at times subjected them to horrific abuse en route.<\/p>\n
On March 9, 2021, following five years of using the service for chartered cargo flights, Amazon purchased 19.5\u00a0percent of ATSG for $131 million and currently reserves options that would let it expand that stake to 40 percent. Among ATSG\u2019s various aviation subsidiaries is Omni Air International, a passenger charter firm that moves humans on behalf of the federal government. Its two most prominent federal customers are the Department of Defense, which uses the firm for troop transports, and the Department of Homeland Security, which has paid the company reportedly exorbitant fees over the years in order to execute so-called special high-risk charter\u00a0flights for its \u201cICE Air\u201d deportation machine.\u00a0Immigration and Customs Enforcement deals with Omni through an intermediary, Classic Air Charter Inc., a flight logistics firm whose parent company previously helped transport CIA prisoners<\/a> to black sites to be tortured.<\/p>\n Homeland Security defines these \u201chigh-risk\u201d flights as any \u201cscheduled to repatriate individuals who cannot be removed via commercial airlines to locations worldwide, or because of other security concerns or risk factors.\u201d According to ICE Air contract documents reviewed by The Intercept, the definition of \u201chigh risk\u201d is so broad as to include virtually anyone, \u201cincluding, but not limited to, the following: uncommon or long-distance destination, failure to comply with removal proceeding, high profile removal, etc.\u201d The notion that these deportees in some way pose a grave danger has created a pretext, agency critics allege, to beat, demean, and terrify them in the name of homeland security.<\/p>\n An Amazon spokesperson acknowledged The Intercept’s request for comment on these allegations but did not provide any response. ATSG, Omni, and ICE did not respond to repeated requests for comment.<\/p>\n ICE Air\u2019s particular reputation for brutality is well earned and thoroughly catalogued. In 2019, the University of Washington Center for Human Rights published a string of reports<\/a> on the flights, documenting a \u201clong series of indignities and illegalities\u201d stretching back decades. The deportation flight abuse crisis is attributed directly to the opacity of firms like Omni: \u201cOver the past decade, the institutional infrastructure behind these flights has shifted from a government operation run by the US Marshals Service on government planes, to a sprawling, semi-secret network of flights on privately-owned aircraft.\u201d<\/p>\n