Albuquerque-based company a big-time player in ICE deportation flights - By Cathy Cook and Dan Boyd, Albuquerque Journal
An Albuquerque company is at the center of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation push.
Earlier this year, CSI Aviation entered into a lucrative contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to provide “relocation” flights.
The flights are not leaving from Albuquerque — or other locations in New Mexico — and appear to be primarily conducted by private airlines that subcontract with CSI Aviation, causing the arrangement to largely fly under the radar locally.
Mass deportations were one of the promises President Donald Trump campaigned on, and last week Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced that federal agencies would increase reviews of immigration records and “take immediate appropriate actions to crackdown on visa overstays.”
The number of weekly U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation flights has increased since February. But the Trump administration’s average daily immigration removals were actually 1% lower than under former President Joe Biden, while average arrests were 2% higher, according to a May report from TRAC.
“We’re seeing much fewer people entering the country and being put in detention centers that way,” said Ian Philabaum, director of legal organizing for Innovation Law Lab, which regularly represents people detained by ICE in Estancia’s Torrance County Detention Facility.
“Many people are not being let in, and the majority of new people that we’ve seen in the (Torrance County) detention center in the last couple months have been people that have been living in the United States for a long time and were picked up in ICE interior enforcement actions in New England, Jersey and Florida,” he added.
In New Mexico over the last week, there has been a visible uptick in targeted ICE activities like the raid at a Lovington dairy, said Miles Tokunow with Santa Fe Dreamers Project, but not necessarily the mass deportations Trump campaigned on.
There have also been reports of immigrants being detained by ICE at regular check-ins across the country. But Tokunow has not seen that occur for any of his nonprofit’s clients, who would typically report to an El Paso office for check-ins and are always accompanied by a legal representative.
What the contract entails
CSI Aviation’s contract with the federal government is set to pay $213.9 million after several modifications, but could end up being as large as $260 million, according to federal records. It is slated to expire in August, but could be extended.
The recent contract is hardly the first of its kind for CSI Aviation, which has landed about $1.6 billion in contracts from the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, since 2005 under several different administrations.
To carry out the contract, CSI Aviation works with a network of subcontractors, including Houston-based Avelo Airlines and Global X Airlines, to provide deportation flights, according to a report from the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight.
Allen Weh, a former state Republican Party chairman who was the GOP’s nominee for an open U.S. Senate seat in 2014, is CSI Aviation’s founder and president.
Weh recently declined to comment about the new contract, referring such questions to ICE.
An ICE spokesman told the Journal the agency’s air operations for deportation flights and domestic relocation are conducted using both commercial airlines and charter aircraft.
He also said ICE Air Operations maintains five primary locations for such flights around the country: Mesa, Arizona; San Antonio; Miami; Alexandria, Louisiana; and Brownsville, Texas.
While ICE does not release information about future deportation flights or schedules in advance, the agency typically conducts “daily” missions from those five cities, said ICE regional spokesman Fernando X. Burgos Ortiz.
“Removal missions are regularly conducted to countries in Central America, including Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, as well as to destinations in the Caribbean, South America, and, when necessary, to Europe, Asia, Africa and other parts of the world for special high-risk missions,” Burgos Ortiz said in a statement.
However, he did not directly respond to questions about how many individuals have been deported under the agency’s contract with CSI Aviation.
For those awaiting deportation flights in detention facilities, the timing is usually a mystery, according to Philabaum.
“Oftentimes, the last thing that a person will know about their deportation flight is that they have a deportation order, and they may not hear anything more about it until somebody wakes them up at 2 a.m. in their bunk and takes them to booking and books them out to be transferred to another facility, where eventually their deportation will be effectuated,” Philabaum said.
That lack of information can undermine safety planning for those being deported back to a country where they fear for their life, Philabaum said, though he added migrants are usually even more distraught about living conditions and treatment while being detained.
A recent uptick in deportation flights
Since the new CSI Aviation contract took effect in March, the number of weekly ICE deportation flights has increased to the highest level since Trump took office in January.
Specifically, there were 190 migrant removal flights in May, according to Tom Cartwright, an immigration advocate who tracks ICE flights.
He said that figure was the highest since September 2021, when the Biden administration returned thousands of Haitian migrants back to the Caribbean country.
More than half of the deportation flights in May were to three Central American countries — Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, according to Cartwright’s research.
While CSI Aviation has largely maintained a low profile in state politics, the company provided its private hangar adjacent to the Albuquerque International Sunport as the site of a Trump campaign rally last October.
That came after Albuquerque city officials rejected the Trump campaign’s request to use the Albuquerque Convention Center for the event, citing planned repair work.
Weh, who was one of roughly 7,000 people who attended the rally, has made significant campaign contributions in recent years to Republican candidates, including $205,000 in four separate donations to Trump’s political committee last year, according to Federal Election Commission data.
While much of CSI Aviation’s business comes from federal contracts — the company describes itself as a “seasoned federal contractor” on its website — it also provides other services. That includes medical air transport for patients who need to be moved to higher-care hospitals in a multi-state area.
HALT Fentanyl Act passes House, heads to President for signature - Kevin Hendricks, nm.news
U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich’s Halt All Lethal Trafficking of (HALT) Fentanyl Act has passed the U.S. House of Representatives, paving the way for the legislation to be signed into law by the President.
The bill, which aims to permanently classify fentanyl-related substances (FRS) as Schedule I drugs under the Controlled Substances Act, was introduced by Heinrich, along with U.S. Senators Bill Cassidy and Chuck Grassley, in January. The Senate passed the bill in March.
The legislation seeks to provide law enforcement with additional tools to combat the trafficking of fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances. By permanently scheduling FRS as Schedule I drugs, authorities aim to dismantle organized criminal trafficking operations and enhance public safety.
“I’m pleased that my HALT Fentanyl Act passed both chambers of Congress and is headed to the White House to be signed into law,” Heinrich said. “I urge the president to immediately sign the HALT Fentanyl Act, which is urgently needed to help our law enforcement crack down on illegal trafficking and allow prosecutors to build stronger, longer-term criminal cases. I will never stop fighting to deliver the resources to get deadly fentanyl out of our communities and save lives.”
The HALT Fentanyl Act has garnered endorsements from numerous law enforcement agencies and organizations, including the Drug Enforcement Association of Federal Narcotics Agents, the Association of State Criminal Investigative Agencies and the National District Attorneys Association, as well as state and local law enforcement across New Mexico.
“The HALT Fentanyl Act is another tool to go after transnational gangs and help make our community safer. Legislation is key for law enforcement to do their job,” Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there were an estimated 107,543 overdose deaths in the United States in 2023, with fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances accounting for nearly 75,000 of those deaths. The bill also aims to streamline the regulatory process for scientists seeking approval to research Schedule I substances, including FRS, to enhance understanding of these substances and develop effective countermeasures.
The HALT Fentanyl Act includes clear and enforceable criminal penalties for fentanyl trafficking, with mandatory minimum penalties of 5 years for 10 grams or more and 10 years for 100 grams or more, and discretionary maximum penalties of 40 years and life, respectively. Additionally, the bill seeks to expand scientific and medical research on fentanyl-related substances by aligning the research and registration process for Schedule I substances with Schedule II substances. This includes allowing researchers to participate in multiple studies, examine newly added substances, and manufacture small quantities of FRS without separate registration.
US Senate seeks to add expanded compensation for nuclear radiation victims to tax bill - By Michael Phillis and Mary Clare Jalonick, Associated Press
A program to compensate people exposed to radiation from past nuclear weapons testing and manufacturing could be restarted and expanded under a provision added by U.S. senators to the major tax and budget policy bill.
The language added Thursday to the Senate version of the massive tax bill would overhaul the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which was originally enacted in 1990 and expired about a year ago. The law compensated people in about a dozen western states who developed serious illnesses from nuclear testing and manufacturing stemming from World War II-era efforts to develop the atomic bomb.
The new Senate provision would expand the coverage to states including Missouri and Tennessee, among other places. It would also cover a wider range of illnesses.
The program's limited scope in the West has led Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri to push for its expansion to include uranium sites in St. Louis and victims in other states. His advocacy led the Senate to twice pass a major overhaul of the program, but it stalled in the U.S. House amid concerns about its cost. Without an agreement over the program’s scope in Congress, the program lapsed.
Hawley said the new language compensates many more people, but at a far lower cost than previous legislation.
“These folks deserve to be recognized for the sacrifices they made and compensated when the government has poisoned them without telling them, without helping them, without making it right," Hawley said Friday. “This is a chance, finally, to make it right.”
Still, the new provision's pathway remains uncertain when the House considers the Senate's changes. While there is broad Senate support for the payments, it is unclear how the addition of Hawley’s legislation will be received by cost-conscious Republicans as they barrel toward a self-imposed July 4 deadline for the overall tax bill. House leaders are waiting to see what comes out of the Senate before deciding whether they might make further changes or simply try to pass the Senate bill and send it to President Donald Trump’s desk.
Lingering effects in Missouri
St. Louis played a key role processing uranium as the United States developed a nuclear weapons program that was vital for winning World War II. But that effort exposed workers and nearby residents to radiation, with lingering issues remaining to this day. An elementary school was closed down a few years ago because of radioactive material found on site. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers remains years away from finishing environmental cleanup work.
An investigation by The Associated Press, The Missouri Independent and MuckRock found the federal government and companies responsible for nuclear bomb production and atomic waste storage sites in the St. Louis area in the mid-20th century were aware of health risks, spills, improperly stored contaminants and other problems but often ignored them.
Nuclear waste contaminated Coldwater Creek, and those who live nearby worry their cancers and other severe illnesses are connected. It’s difficult to definitively link specific illnesses with the waste, but advocates for an expanded compensation program said there’s evidence it made people sick years later.
After the report by the AP and others, Hawley said sick St. Louis residents deserved help, too. He was joined by Dawn Chapman, co-founder of Just Moms STL, which brought attention to local nuclear contamination. She has called St. Louis a “national sacrifice zone.”
“Many of us have had extreme amounts of devastation in the form of illnesses in our families,” Chapman said Friday.
Expanding ‘downwinder’ eligibility
The provision added Thursday would also expand coverage areas in several states for those exposed to radioactive contamination that blew downwind from government sites. In New Mexico, for example, advocates have sought to expand the program for people near the spot where the first Manhattan Project-era bomb was tested. These residents didn't know the blast was why ash had fallen. It poised water, crops and livestock. Attention for these “downwinders” rose following the release of the film Oppenheimer.
“Our federal government has a moral responsibility to support Americans that helped defend our country — and it has a moral responsibility to include all people who were exposed. That begins with reauthorizing RECA and amending it to include those who have been left out for far too long,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich, Democrat of New Mexico.
Prior to the addition of the radiation compensation measure, Hawley had so far withheld support for the overall tax package, questioning cuts to Medicaid programs and the potential effects on rural hospitals and low income residents. He said he still wants to see improvements in the package, but added that help for radiation victims was essential.
“It would be very hard for me to vote for a bill that doesn't include (the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act). This is extremely, extremely important to me," Hawley said.
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Conservation groups worried about how Senate public land sale plan could affect New Mexico – Cathy Cook, Albuquerque Journal
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee released the text of its piece of the Senate budget bill Wednesday night. It includes a mandate to sell 2 million to 3 million acres of Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands over the next five years in 11 western states, including New Mexico, for the sake of building housing. A similar proposal in the House was stripped shortly before the lower chamber passed its budget package.
“Senate Republicans have finally said the quiet part out loud: They want to put millions of acres of our public lands up in a fire sale, destroy the investments that have created thousands of manufacturing and clean energy jobs — including in their home states, and obliterate programs that lower energy costs for everyday Americans,” the top committee Democrat Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico said in a statement.
Committee Chair Mike Lee, R-Utah, has spearheaded recent efforts to sell federally owned public lands.
“We’re cutting billions in unused Biden-era climate slush funds, opening up energy and resource development, turning federal liabilities into taxpayer value, while making housing more affordable for hardworking American families. This is how we make government smaller, freer, and work for Americans,” Lee said in a statement.
The states that would be eligible for land sales include New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Alaska, California, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming. Montana is specifically excluded.
The legislation also excludes national monuments, recreation areas, conservation areas, historic sites, memorials or battlefields; units of the national wildlife refuge system, fish hatchery system or national park system; and components of the national wilderness preservation system, national wild and scenic rivers system or national trails system. Land with valid existing rights, like mining claims or grazing permits, would also be excluded.
Compared to the dead House proposal, the Senate plan includes more land and broadens the sellable land from just BLM land to include Forest Service land.
Under the proposal, 67,500 acres to 100,000 acres of BLM land and 46,600 acres to 70,000 acres of National Forest land in New Mexico could be sold off, according to an estimate from Michael Carroll, director of the BLM campaign at advocacy group The Wilderness Society.
The legislation says any interested party could nominate public lands for sale, language that concerns Carroll.
“There’s a lot of questions of who qualifies for ‘any interested party.’ Does that include foreign governments? Does it include major international corporations?” Carroll said.
Local and state governments would have right of first refusal to purchase the federal land.
Chris Wood, president and CEO of advocacy group Trout Unlimited, is hopeful the legislation won’t make it through Congress.
“Because in the pantheon of bad ideas, this one sits pretty close to the top,” Wood said. “I think what the sponsors of this idea forget is that public lands are a uniquely American idea and ideal. These are the lands that literally formed the character of the nation as we made our way west, and they are the envy of the rest of the world.”
Wood is not opposed to trading low conservation value public lands with high conservation value public lands for the sake of developing housing for communities, but believes mandating land sales in a federal budget bill without a public consideration process is offensive.
Much of the remaining trout habitat for the 23 native U.S. trout, including the Gila trout and the Rio Grande cutthroat trout, is within federally owned public land, Wood said.
“Hunters and anglers across the western United States, who don’t want to beg to hunt on private land, are going to turn out against this proposal in droves. The hunting and angling community is one that’s slow to anger, but I would avoid the hornet’s nest when they get worked up. And they’re getting worked up about this one,” he said.
Proposed federal funding cuts to tribal colleges spark fear – Bella Davis, New Mexico In Depth
Kaiya Brown was at work last week when she started getting the texts. Her friends were asking if she’d seen the news: The Trump administration wants to cut funding for tribal colleges by nearly 90%.
Brown (Diné) is in her first year at Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute in northwest Albuquerque, one of 37 tribal colleges and universities in the country and four in New Mexico, many of which offer free tuition to tribal citizens.
If Congress approves the administration’s budget request released last Monday, funding for the schools will drop from over $183 million to about $22 million in the next fiscal year, starting in October. Federal funding makes up 74% of total revenue for tribal colleges and universities, ICT reported in January.
“It’s really scary,” Brown said. “I don’t think enough people understand the importance of tribal colleges and what they do for our communities. They provide opportunities that many students would have never had. It makes me really emotional, honestly, because they don’t understand how this would impact so many lives.”
Brown is studying early childhood education with hopes of going into social work to advocate for Native children.
Part of why she chose a tribal college was because she didn’t feel safe or supported at her Rio Rancho high school. In one instance, Brown wore her regalia, including moccasins and jewelry, to school, and a teacher asked, “Where’s your feathers?” Another time, she and a couple other Native students were carrying frybread for a sale, and a group of their peers started mocking them. One of the students told them, “I thought we killed all your people.”
Her experience so far at college, Brown said, couldn’t be more different.
“We’re all so close to one another. We all want to see each other succeed,” she said. “And I truly feel that from the staff and from my instructors. These are Native instructors, people that look like me and know my ways.”
She’s also enjoyed the small class sizes. Last fall, 215 students were enrolled, according to data from the college, which was founded in 1971. The largest class Brown is in right now has five students total. Instead of getting lost in a lecture hall with a hundred other people, she’s able to get more hands-on help from instructors.
But the mood on campus hasn’t been the same lately, Brown said. The community has been reeling from a round of layoffs earlier this year.
The institute, along with Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas, is federally operated. In February, the Bureau of Indian Education laid off dozens of faculty and staff members at the two institutions in response to Trump’s directives to reduce the federal workforce. Many classes were left without instructors, and a power outage in Brown’s dorm lasted 13 hours because there weren’t enough maintenance workers available to fix it. A few weeks later, some employees were re-hired, but it was unclear whether the hirings were permanent or temporary.
That’s according to a lawsuit against the federal government brought by the Native American Rights Fund in March. Brown is a plaintiff, along with four Haskell students and three tribal nations, including Isleta Pueblo.
“Tribal nations and the federal government should be working together to best serve our Native students,” Isleta Pueblo Gov. Eugene Jiron said in a statement. “Instead, the administration is randomly, without preparation and in violation of their federal trust responsibility, taking away teachers The layoffs worsened problems caused by chronic understaffing at the schools, the lawsuit argues. Congress has underfunded tribal colleges by $250 million a year, ProPublica reported in 2024.
The re-hirings brought some relief, Brown said, but the proposed cuts have stirred up fear among students and employees again.
“These schools have done so much for our people,” she said. “So many passionate people and talented artists have come from these schools. They give us the tools to pursue our dreams. It’s like our stepping stone into the world. And taking that away will be devastating to a lot of students, including myself.”
New Mexico is home to three other tribal colleges: Diné College, which has campuses in Shiprock and Crownpoint, as well as in Arizona; the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe; and Navajo Technical University, with a main campus in Crownpoint. In fall 2024, an estimated 3,378 students were enrolled at the schools, according to the state Higher Education Department.
In a statement last week, Robert Martin, president of the Institute of American Indian Arts, said, “I know that we will prevail in the end, but we can’t take that for granted. We have strong Congressional support but they need to hear from all of our constituents.”
Possible measles exposures at Sunport; other locations from traveler cases – Danielle Prokop, Source New Mexico
Two travelers visiting New Mexico may have exposed people to measles at the Albuquerque International Sunport and other locations across Bernalillo, Santa Fe and Sandoval counties over the past two weeks, health officials said on Friday. Other locations included Walmarts in Albuquerque and Santa Fe and an indoor pool in Rio Rancho.
The New Mexico Department of Health reported that two separate travelers were diagnosed with measles cases in the state: an adult with unknown vaccination status and an 18-month old with at least one vaccine.
“These two cases remind us that travel remains an exposure risk when it comes to this contagious virus,” said NMDOH Chief Medical Officer Dr. Miranda Durham in a statement. “The measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine remains the best protection against measles.”
The travelers’ diagnoses do not impact New Mexico’s measles infections, which remain at 81 cases Friday.
The reported cases may have exposed people at the following places, dates and times:
Rio Rancho: 1 to 4 p.m. on Monday, June 2: Rio Rancho Aquatic Center, 745 Loma Colorado NE
Santa Fe: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Thursday, June 5: Walmart Supercenter, 5701 Herrera Drive
Albuquerque: 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Friday, June 6: Walmart Supercenter, 2550 Coors Boulevard NW
9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Friday, June 6: El Super, 4201 Central Avenue NW
9:30 a.m. to 1:40 p.m. on Tuesday, June 10: University of New Mexico Hospital Adult Urgent Care, 2211 Lomas Boulevard NE
3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday, June 10: Albuquerque International Sunport, 2200 Sunport Blvd
- Main terminal and TSA Security Checkpoint
- Terminal A: Gate A-6
NMDOH urged anyone who was possibly exposed to check vaccination status and to stay home if symptoms such as a rash or fever develop. Further questions about testing, vaccinations and potential treatment can be directed to the NMDOH Hotline at 1-833-796-8773.
Measles symptoms do not develop immediately, often between one to three weeks from exposure. People are infectious several days before and after symptoms such as headache, cough, runny nose, red eyes, fever, and spotty red rash appear.
Additional information, such as vaccine clinic hours, is available on NMDOH’s measles webpage.