This story was first published at Colorado Newsline.
DENVER | Activists continue to pressure Colorado-based Key Lime Air over its operation of flights for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Four representatives from local social justice groups, including Aurora Unidos CSO and the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, met Wednesday with Centennial Airport CEO Mike Fronapfel and Arapahoe County Commissioner Jessica Campbell, who also sits on the airport’s board of commissioners, to learn more information about Key Lime Air’s footprint and operations at the airport.
“We are interested in continuing this fight to end deportation flights,” Aurora Unidos organizer Yoselin Corrales said after the meeting. “We’re passionate about supporting individuals and immigrants in our community that are being abused and harmed by this administration. We know that Key Lime Air is complicit, and so we are looking to bring the fight to them, and looking for as much information as we can gain for the campaign against their company.”
Corrales said Fronapfel approached protesters during a November demonstration at the airport, saying he “supported what we were doing and would protect our ability to do so.”
Key Lime Air’s headquarters are at the Centennial Airport through a sublease with jetCenters of Colorado. The airline’s operation of ICE flights was first reported by Colorado Newsline in October. Two of its planes frequently fly routes between known ICE hubs, including in Texas, Louisiana and Florida, according to a Newsline analysis of publicly available flight tracking data.
The company flew 83 ICE flights in September and 192 in October, according to Human Rights First’s most recent ICE Flight Monitor Report. It is part of a growing network of companies, such as Avelo and GlobalX, that provide domestic immigration enforcement flights as the Trump administration ramps up mass deportation efforts.
Organizers acknowledge that airport leadership have little power to stop Key Lime Air’s immigration-related activity.
“The Centennial Airport is not going to be able to kick Key Lime Air out. They’re not going to be able to end the abuses that ICE is causing. But each blow that we strike to these entities puts a delay to what ICE is capable of doing,” Corrales said. “Anything that we can do to slow that process down until we can find longer term solutions is the goal.”
Human Rights First documented 109 total immigration enforcement flights — across all the airlines ICE uses — out of Denver between January and October. In April, the U.S. Coast Guard operated at least three immigration enforcement flights from Centennial Airport.
Cliff Honeycutt, Key Lime Air’s CEO, previously wrote in a text message that he can’t discuss private charter operations.
Organizers plan to attend and submit public comment at an upcoming Arapahoe County Public Airport Authority Board of Commissioner’s meeting.
Just more evidence that we are in a “cold civil war” with the political far-left who will use a “by any means necessary” to protect their pet illegal immigrants and future source of political power. Denver is just one of many U.S. cities that has decided that they are no longer subject to Federal laws they don’t agree with. Our Union is at peril.
Yes, the Union is indeed in peril.
From fools like you.
Increase the deportations. The criminals can also self deport:
https://www.ice.gov/self-deportation
It’s ridiculous to impede the removal of illegal alien criminals from Colorado. Don’t be fooled by this story that it’s not criminals who are being deported. We have an extreme left that is like a cancer to our country. They only serve their own interests, not ours. Don’t be fooled.
First, people can’t be “illegal”. The Supreme Court made this clear decades ago. The criminal law addresses behavior, not status. Commit an illegal act and the law may sanction you for your behavior, but not your status. To advocate otherwise is essentially to criminalize your very existence, which you had nothing to do with.
Second, please let us know what native American tribe you belong to. Those were the people who were present on the continent prior to the European conquest. I suggest you get a copy of the movie Soldier Blue and watch it. It will educate you about the tender mercy with which Native Americans were treated when white people decided they stood in the way of white conquest.
I coincidentally read the opinion out of the federal court in Chicago which documented the lies and deception our government has engaged in to “purify” a major city and keep itself nice and “American”. It’s a stunning account of the Trump administration’s mendacious justifications for overrunning a major city, the third most populous city in the U.S. Page after page documents the illegal behavior of our federal government. A government, I might add, that has lied shamelessly to the “illegals” and the courts in their quest to avoid responsibility for its own criminal behavior. Such as firing pepper charges at clergy from near point-blank range.
The federal government has lied over and over again about what it’s up to. INS promises people they will have their day in court, and then arrest them and immediately deport them. The District Court decision documents the cruelty and mendacity of our federal government under Trump.
Kind of like murdering people on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico. Which is a war crime. So, naturally, Trump loves it.
Are you a murder fan too? Then sign up with Trump’s ICE minions. You’ll have a ball.
If you don’t have proper documentation and you illegally entered the United States you’re an “illegal” plain and simple. If you attempt to bring death to the United States you are clearly an enemy target. Dance around it all you want. The dems want illegals so they can make them legal to add unethically to their voting base. We see right through this BS.
I’m not dancing around anything. I am relating facts.
Learn some critical thinking, or even just thinking.
Read the factual findings of the trial court in the case I referred to. Or are you simply afraid to? That should also tell you something.
I can imagine Mr. Ryan as my defense attorney:
Judge: Sir, you are charged with trespassing. How do you plead?
Ryan: We plead innocent your honor based on two points. First, no person is illegal and second, the land isn’t really theirs as it was stolen from indigenous peoples.
Judge: Mr. Kirk, you might be better represented by selecting another attorney.
private planes because busses are too expensive. criminals deporting criminals is hilarious