5,000th ICE detainee flown from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, flight tracker says
Minnesota's Immigration and Customs Enforcement surge of the winter and early spring might be over, but a Twin Cities man hasn't stopped tracking deportation flights out of the airport.
By his count, he's documented 5,000 detainees flown out from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport since November.
"These are mothers who aren't going to be home tonight for bedtime snuggles with their kids," said Nick Benson.
For months, he's spent his afternoons at the airport.
"They're fathers who aren't there to support their families anymore. I've seen men and women who are old enough to be grandparents getting on these flights," he said. "Public attention may have moved on. ICE is still here taking people out of our communities."
Tuesday marked a milestone. Benson says he witnessed the 5,000th detainee boarding a flight to Louisiana.
"That 5,000 doesn't include the thousands loaded onto these flights before we started watching in November," he said.
He and a team of observers built an independent database using publicly available flight information, using known flights to count the number of people boarding these planes.
"We set up the camera, we record them loading and then we head home and put that information in a database. We use that to keep track of people that are loaded and unloaded from each flight," he said.
Benson says he tracks these numbers in person but also uses data from the Department of Homeland Security to confirm his numbers are accurate.
"Our margin of error was at least 1 person per flight," he said.
Benson says families of detained immigrants have reached out to him on the work he is doing.
"This is the only transparency that's available to these families. I've heard from families who have loved ones being put on these flights and they'll say thank you for being there because it shows someone cares about my loved one," Benson said.
Benson says he wants state lawmakers to force the airport to install cameras to document the flights.
Until then, he'll keep taking pictures.
