This story was first published at Colorado Newsline.
DENVER | Immigrant rights advocates on Tuesday renewed their calls for the University of Colorado to end its relationship with Centennial-Airport-based Key Lime Air over its operation of detainee transport flights for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
A small crowd gathered outside the CU Board of Regents offices in Denver and later presented about 3,500 petition signatures asking the board to take action. The university’s athletics department says it has contracted with Key Lime, which is headquartered at Centennial Airport in Arapahoe County, to provide air travel for its men’s and women’s basketball teams since 2011.
Activists want “any and all current and potential clients of Key Lime (to) terminate or refuse to initiate a contract with them, until they do the right thing and terminate their contract with ICE,” said Daniel Mondragon with the group Interfaith Immigration Network.
“Human beings are being violently and unjustly apprehended, detained in horrible conditions with extremely limited food and medical care, and are being torn from their families to other cities and countries,” Mondragon said. “Every private company working with ICE is complicit in these injustices.”
Key Lime’s operation of ICE flights was first reported by Newsline last year. Two of the airline’s planes frequently flew routes to and from ICE detention hubs in Texas, Louisiana and elsewhere, according to a Newsline analysis of publicly available flight tracking data.
The flights involve the transportation of dozens of detainees who are loaded on and off planes in shackles, with their personal belongings apparently collected in white trash bags, according to scenes witnessed by Newsline reporters. Advocates say ICE’s pattern of moving people across the country in these “shuffle flights” can harm detainees’ mental health, family connections and access to legal services.
Members of Denver City Council voted 11-1 in December against a resolution that would have allowed Key Lime Air to lease ground space at Denver International Airport, saying that the company’s work for ICE was at odds with “the values of our city.”
Colorado airline operates flights for ICE, records show
Dana Miller, an activist who worked as a flight attendant for nearly 30 years, outlined safety concerns relating to the transportation of shackled detainees, questioning whether Key Lime personnel are properly trained and could safely evacuate detainees in an emergency. Key Lime has said that it does not discuss charter operations “as a matter of policy” but operates all flights according to “the highest federally mandated safety standards.”
After months of pressure, including a protest outside a meeting of the regents in Boulder last month, Miller said that CU Board of Regents Chair Ken Montera brushed aside activists’ concerns in an email two weeks ago, telling her “there’s nothing (the board) can do.”
Montera didn’t respond to a request for comment Tuesday. Though Democrats hold a majority on the Board of Regents, Montera, an El Paso Republican representing the 5th Congressional District, was elected chair earlier this year after Democrat Callie Rennison broke ranks to cast her vote for him.
CU Boulder paid Key Lime about $267,000 for travel services during the 2023-24 athletic season season, according to Boulder Reporting Lab.
Regent Wanda James, a Democrat representing the 1st District, joined demonstrators outside the building and said she supports the board taking action.
“I stand with our immigrant community that has said no to ICE flights and Key Lime Air,” said James, who was elected to the board in 2022 and is currently challenging incumbent U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette in the 1st District congressional race. “And sadly, I stand against most of our regents … who don’t seem to see that there is a moral issue with Key Lime Air doing ICE flights.”
In his second term, President Donald Trump has pledged to carry out “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country,” aiming to remove all of the estimated 12 million immigrants in the country without permanent legal status, regardless of how long they have been in the country, the legal status of their family members or whether they have criminal records.
Impacts to NCAA tournaments
Tuesday’s protest comes as the CU women’s basketball team is set to participate in the NCAA women’s basketball tournament, with a first-round matchup against the University of Illinois in Nashville on Saturday. The men’s team failed to qualify for the NCAA tournament and will compete for the second time in the College Basketball Crown in Las Vegas beginning April 1.
As the number of ICE detainee flights hits record highs amid the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts, NCAA officials warned in a memo that teams competing in the men’s and women’s March Madness tournaments this month should expect substantial impacts to aircraft availability — part of what the memo called “adjustments to the realities of the current travel marketplace.” Keith Gill, a member of the NCAA men’s basketball committee, attributed the impacts to the fact that “ICE is taking up a lot of charter planes.”
“It is crazy to me that we have allowed a company to move around our student athletes, many of which, maybe even most of which, happen to be from immigrant families,” James said.
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