When Lala landed a job as a flight attendant with GlobalX, her job offer came with a $26 hourly rate, four weeks of mandated FAA training, and a cyan and light green scarf to wear. The startup had big aspirations: to transport VIPs, like musicians and pro sports teams, and to fly to elite destinations. Instead, it's become "the dominant player in the loose network of deportation contractors known as ICE Air," writes McKenzie Funk for ProPublica. Funk spoke with seven current and former GlobalX flight attendants to get a window into these deportation flights. And while their accounts are tough to verify—neither ICE nor GlobalX would comment for the story—Funk writes that their stories sync with each other and align with what appears in legal filings and other publicly available documents.
For one, Lala, who has left GlobalX, didn't wear the scarf on deportation flights. She wasn't permitted to due to "safety concerns that a detainee might grab it and use it against us," Lala said. She couldn't walk the aisle without a guard escort, look detainees in the eyes, or deliver them water (that task is left to the flight's private security guards, whom some flight attendants described as demanding and dismissive of FAA safety rules). "Arm and disarm doors, that was our duty," Lala said. But the overarching duty of all flight attendants is to maintain the safety of passengers who, in the case of these flights, are all chained.
"We have never gotten a clear answer on what we do in an ICE Air evacuation," one flight attendant said. "They will not give us an answer." Added another, "It's only a matter of time" before a deportation flight ends in disaster. As Lala puts it, "Honestly, I don't know what we would do." Such emergencies aren't unheard of: Funk cites ICE Air incident reports that show six occurred between 2014 and 2019. (Read the full article here.)
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