You're listening to a stage talk titled Tracing
Deportation Flights with Gillian Brockell. After
running a continuous blog, publishing investigations
at well -known news sites and maintaining a global
tracker of these types of flights, Gillian felt
like the right person to walk us through how
to do this kind of open source work. This stage
talk is best listened to whilst you explore the
tools simultaneously. Gillian broke down the
basic tools of her craft and provided some insight
into her own experience reporting on this escalating
issue. You can find links to all the resources
mentioned in the talk in the podcast description.
This talk was hosted by me, Charlotte Maher on
Thursday, the 14th of May, 2026 in the Bellingcat
Discord server. Hello all and welcome to another
stage talk. This week, we're joined by independent
journalist Gillian Brockell, whose work sits
at the intersection of open source intelligence,
investigative journalism, aviation data and public
accountability. A former flight attendant, Gillian
has exposed that the US Coast Guard had done
hundreds of ice flights on planes meant for search
and rescue. was the first to identify the aircraft
carrying seven third country nationals to South
Sudan last May when it was still mid -flight.
She helped to reveal the full extent of Kristi
Noem's aircraft buying spree that contributed
to her being removed from the DHS and uncovered
ICE's secret use of commercial flights to send
Liam Ramos and other captured migrant children
to the Dili Detention Centre, amongst many other
stories. Over the last several years, aircraft
tracking has evolved from a niche hobby into
a powerful reporting and research methodology,
one which we've really tracked within this server.
Publicly available aviation signals, registries
and flight databases are now regularly used to
investigate government operations, migration
enforcement, military logistics, corporate activity,
sanctions evasion, and crisis response. At the
same time, flight tracking isn't something covered
in Jensen training or familiar to the general
public, so gaps in knowledge arise. Today, we're
hoping to close some of those gaps. Gilliam will
walk us through the fundamentals of aircraft
tracking, the strengths and weaknesses of major
flight tracking platforms, techniques for identifying
government and ICE -associated flights, and the
broader investigative toolkits surrounding aviation
data. We will have time for audience questions.
You can place your questions in the chat accessible
on the right -hand corner of your screen. But
please remember that this is being audio recorded
for the podcast. So if you don't want me to mention
your username, please add that as a note in your
question. Okay. Gillian, let's hear more about
your work. All right. Thank you so much, Charlie.
Hi, everyone. I'm Gillian. I track and report
on ice flights, as Charlie said. And I use a
lot of flight tracking tools or some of that
with you today. And I know that there are a lot
of avgeeks in the Bellingcat community. So I
just want to apologize in advance. I'm going
to assume no aviation knowledge in my talk. And
so if a lot of this is repetitive for you, I
am sorry. So first I'll talk about signal types,
some basic terms and aircraft identifiers. how
to use ADS -B Exchange, how to identify an ICE
flight, and then I'll touch on some other tools
for flight tracking in general, and ICE flights
in particular. So there are several types of
signals on different aircraft, but by far the
most common is ADS -B, which stands for Automatic
Dependent Surveillance Broadcast. It's basically
the replacement, a modern day replacement for
radar, and it's a lot more accurate. So ADS -B
sends out information about itself, its identification,
aircraft type, location, altitude, and speed.
And the key thing about it is that it transmits
this flight info to any receiver within range,
other aircraft, air traffic control, satellites,
and to aviation enthusiasts or av geeks who've
bought their own receivers. and set them up in
their homes. And that will become very important
later in the talk. So in general, civil aircraft
are required to have ADS -B on any time they're
operating. There are some exceptions, but I'm
not going to get into that. It won't really matter
here. Military aircraft. Most military aircraft
are equipped with ADS -B, but they often have
it set in a mode where they're taking in everyone
else's ADS -B information, but they're not transmitting
their own. However, they do use ADS -B sometimes,
and they also use other signals, other signal
types that are detectable by most aircraft most
of the time. So usually military aircraft only
go completely dark and untrackable. when they're
in an active combat mission or if they are doing
surveillance. And if you ever see a military
plane on a flight tracking app and it has like
a really squiggly line, that just means that
it's being tracked by multilateration, which
is not as accurate as ADS -B. It doesn't mean
that the plane is actually squiggling around
like that. Okay, so let's talk about some basic
aircraft terms and identifiers. The first thing
you might hear about is the registration number,
which is also called a tail number or an end
number. Those are all the same thing. This is
basically the aircraft's license plate. It has
to be visibly displayed on the back of every
plane on both sides. And that's probably what
you'll use. It's what I use most of the time
when flight tracking. And like a license plate,
the numbers can be totally random or custom.
So you'll see some funny custom and numbers sometimes.
And in the US, all non -military aircraft, their
registration number starts with the letter N,
as in Nancy. That's where N number comes from.
And in the UK, it's the letter G. Every country
has their own. Kenya is 5Y. I have no idea why,
but it is. And then U .S. military registrations
are generally numbers only, no letters. And they
usually, not always, start with two digits that
correspond to the year they came into service,
a dash, and then four digits. So nine, eight,
dash, one, two, three, four. A call sign is a
unique identifier for a flight that is made up
of letters and numbers. The call sign can just
be the end number. A lot of private jets will
just have the end number be the call sign. But
in commercial air travel, the letters are generally
an abbreviation of the carrier's name, and the
numbers are generally the flight number that
are on your ticket. So JetBlue flight 1690 from
JFK to Austin is always going to have the call
sign JDU 1690, regardless of the tail number
on that particular day. This is also the ID that
air traffic controllers use to communicate with
pilots. So if you overhear ATC recordings, they'll
be like, jibber, you're 1690, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah. And yeah. So then I'm just going
to talk about hex and squawk numbers very briefly
because I don't use them that much and they're
not that useful for flight tracking. The hex
code is essentially an international tail number.
for all aircraft, military, and civil. It's a
little more complicated than that. Doesn't matter
here. It always has six characters and they'll
be the letters A through F and the digits zero
through nine. And it's also sometimes called
an ICAO number. ICAO is like the International
FAA. It's like aviation governing body. And they're
the ones that give out the numbers. So that's
why it's sometimes called ICAO. Squawk. All you
need to know about the squawk is that squawking
7700 means the airplane is experiencing an emergency.
Okay, so one more term and then I swear to God
we'll look at the lab now. That term is LAD,
L -A -D -D. It stands for limited aircraft data
displayed. In the U .S. an aircraft owner can
apply to the FAA for a LAD designation. And what
that will do is hide the tail number and the
call sign from flight tracking apps that get
their data from government -owned ADS -B receivers.
So on Flight Radar 24 and FlightAware, you might
see that there is a GoStream 6 flying over Austin.
But you won't see that the tail number is N6Q8TS,
which is one of Elon Musk's private jets. and
it's generally used by rich people to hide their
private jets from public view. That's the basic
purpose. But this is really important for tracking
ICE flights because in April of last year, the
FAA gave lab designation to all ICE charter airlines.
So for activists, immigration attorneys, family
members of immigrants in ICE custody, or just
the general public who poke around on those apps,
ICE's air operation basically disappeared. And
that same month is when their activities really
started to boom under the Trump administration.
So without further ado, let's look at the live
map for ADS -B Exchange. And my share screen
function is not working, so we're going to go
to Charlie's screen. She unfortunately doesn't
have ADS -B Exchange premium, so she's going
to have pop -up ads. If you want to pan out so
we can see all of North America, that would be
great. And that'll just, great. Fantastic. So
it'll just take a minute for all of the flight
data to come in. Beautiful. So this is a map
of all of the aircraft that ADS -B exchange receivers
are getting right now. All right, so this is
a collection of all the flight data from thousands
of avgeeks all over the world who have set up
their own receivers. And because they aren't
getting the data from the government, the LAD
designation does not matter. It means absolutely
nothing. And so all of the information is collected
and transmitted here. So if you're listening
to this on the podcast, we are looking at a map
of North America. And it is completely covered
in airplane icons, mostly hot pink and purple,
but other colors too. And the colors correspond
to altitude. So a plane on the ground is orange.
It takes off, it turns yellow. As it's climbing,
it turns green, then blue. Then purple is the
cruising altitude for most planes. And you can
probably see that most of the hot pink icons
are like smaller airplane icons. Those are private
jets. Private jets tend to cruise at 45 ,000
feet because it's faster up there. All right,
so let's just look at some of the basic functions
here. So in the upper right column, you'll see
the search and then filters and columns. We're
just going to look at search and filters. You
can use the main search bar for most of the things
you want to do on ADS -B. So let's look for Elon
Musk's plane. Just in the main search bar, you
can put N628TS. And we see another pop -up come
up. that shows the information for that aircraft.
You might need to reload to get the screen to
isolate. Okay, great. So we're not seeing anything,
so that means it hasn't flown in the last 24
hours. But what we can do, in that column, you'll
see the word history, and you'll click that plus
sign, and you'll see the UTC date. The UTC is
just universal time. also called Zulu time. It's
the same as Greenwich Mean Time. And so where
it says previous, yeah, you can click a specific
day like you're already doing. Fantastic. Or
you can click previous. I think it flew yesterday.
And we see a flight come up. And then you'll
also see there, you'll see all of the unique
information for that aircraft. It's tail number.
It's type. Type code just means the type of plane
that it is. the call sign that it used, the last
time that it flew. All right, very good. And
yeah, so if you can X out of that, we'll get
the full screen back. And now we'll use the main
screen, the main search bar again, to search
a call sign. So global X, global crossing, also
called global crossing, is ICE's main charter
carrier. They always use the call sign GXA. So
we'll just put GXA in the main search bar. And
it's going to bring up all of the planes that
are in the air right now for Global X. And if
you scroll over one of the planes, so we'll see
GXA 6108. So one thing that we flight trackers
know from having tracked a lot of Global X planes,
at all of their call signs that are ICE flights.
GXA then four digits and it starts at the six.
So this is an ICE flight. And then if you can
go to the history and we can see that all of
the planes that it has brought up have been doing
the last few days. And it looks like a lot of
ICE flights. All ICE flights take off and return
from the same city and ICE airs main hub cities.
are Alexandria, Louisiana, which you have your
cursor over right now, Harlingen, Texas, El Paso,
and Mesa, Arizona. All right. So if you want
to clear that search, I'm going to show you the
more specific filters. So if you can click that
filters tab. So all of this information, you
can ask for it more specifically. So one of the
pitfalls of the search bar I did GXA. It's going
to show me anything that has GXA in any of its
flight information. So it might show me a plane
in Brazil. It's just a little prop plane that
has GXA in its tail number. So if we do it by
call sign here, we have the call sign option,
GXA, then I'm just going to be getting the Global
X planes. Using the main search bar is going
to be mostly right most of the time. And you
can see you can do it by type. So say I heard
about an ICE flight that was going to Africa
that was on a new carrier that they hadn't used
before, and I didn't know the N number. Well,
I know that most ICE flights to Africa are on
Gulfstream 5s. So maybe I would put in GLF 5
and search. And that's going to show me all the
Gulfstream 5s in the air right now. And that
might help me to figure out which plane that
was. And then if you scroll down, you can see,
you can look at, I only want to see planes with
the LAD designation. I only want to see planes
with a LAD designation. I only want to see military
aircraft. I only want to see aircraft that are
registered in the United States or in any country.
There are specific boxes for all of those. And
you can also do it by signal. As you can see,
there's ADS -B signal, MLAP mode S. You probably
won't use those. OK, so those are the basics.
So how do you tell if an ICE flight is an ICE
flight? Because remember, these charter airlines,
they do also have other clients, not every Global
X flight. is going to be an ICE flight. And ICE
is also adding new charter partners all the time.
I think they've added four of them this year.
So first, all ICE trips start and end in an ICE
detention hub city. Like I said, Alexandria,
Louisiana is the main one, El Paso, Harlingen,
Texas, Mesa, Arizona. They're all out and back
patterns. You can learn a lot. about an aircraft
and what it's being used for just by the patterns.
And they're all going to go back the way they
came. They generally only stop somewhere for
about two hours. And when they have to do a fuel
stop or lay over for crew rest, if they're doing
like an Africa or Asia deportation, they tend
to use the same cities over and over. And then,
like I said, most of these airlines also have
call sign conventions for their ICE flights.
So Global X has GXA, four digits, and they'll
start with the number six. If an ICE flight isn't
meeting all of these, or if a flight isn't meeting
all of these criteria, then I'm not going to
say it's an ICE flight. So there could be ICE
flights that aren't meeting these criteria. you
know, for reporting purposes you want to, you
know, are on the side of caution. There are generally
about 50 ice flights a day. And then the last
button I want to show you, if you see those blue
icons that are by themselves next to a black
info column, the bottom button that's a triangle
with a circle on it, if you click on that, this
is going to be how you look at a certain area
over time. So if you want to zoom in on Central
Louisiana. We'll get Alexandria up here. So you
can see on this bottom bar that came up, we have
date, and then we have UTC time, and we have
speed. So say I wanted to look on a certain day,
I used this button for my Coast Guard reporting
because I didn't have the tail numbers. But a
source that I use a lot named JJNDC, who is in
the chat, He was like, I think these Coast Guard
planes that are supposed to be for search and
rescue are being used for ice flights. They're
following ice flight patterns. Search and rescue
flight patterns are very different. You know,
they go out over the water, they go around in
a circle and then they go back to the same city.
But now they were doing ice flight patterns.
So I didn't have the tail numbers for those.
So the way that I got those was going down to
Alexandria and looking over time. to spot the
planes coming up. And you can speed it up if
you want to make it a little faster. But I will
say ADS -B Exchange uses a lot of memory on your
computer. And the more filters you put on, the
more memory it's going to use. Even if you're
only looking at one plane, if you're using a
lot of filters, it could make your computer crash
if you don't have a lot of memory. And there
are also usually pop -up ads, although there
aren't right now, which is amazing. There are
pop -up ads unless you have premium and they
can drive you insane pretty quickly. So get premium.
Okay. Yeah. So say you want to track a plane
that is going into one of the areas that ADS
-B coverage is not very good with. So if you
want to scroll back out at all of North America,
or even the whole world. We'll just wait for
all the flight data to come in. All right. So
you'll see there are some gaps. There's basically
nothing over the Amazon. There's nothing over
the Pacific. That doesn't mean that there are
no planes flying there. It just means that there
are no ADS -B member receivers there. There's
nobody in the Amazon who's an ADS -B exchange
member. So this is something that I use a lot
when I'm tracking flights in Africa. As you can
see, the ADS -B coverage in Africa is not very
good. So this is where Flight Radar 24 actually
comes in really handy. This function only works
on the gold version, so you have to pay for it.
But because they're using satellite, they can
tell you exactly where planes are landing, but
they won't give you the ID. So you just triangulate,
you know, you say it's usually like off the coast
of Senegal. Well, off the coast of Senegal, I
can see that on ADSB exchange that N588AT, which
is a plane that I track a lot, is about to land
in Dakar. Okay. So now, and it's at, you know,
UTC 1624. Okay, great. Now I go over to flight
radar 24 and I go, ah, a Gulfstream 5. is flying
in the exact same position at 1624. That's the
plane. Now I can track it as it flies and makes
its stop all through Africa. Okay, so now you
may be wondering how do I find tail numbers for
all the planes in the charter airline fleets
or any other planes that you want to track. There
are a couple ways. First, some of them put all
of their fleet numbers on their company website.
Journey Aviation does that. Next, you can try
Planespotters .net. It's like a Wikipedia for
airplane pictures. There are different flavors
of Avgeek. Some people are flight tracking enthusiasts.
Some people really like taking photos of different
airplanes. Some people are like... aviation or
like experiential avgeeks. So like, oh, the Embraer
190 is doing its last flight in the United States.
I have to be on it. You know, that's a different
kind. But the Planespotters folks, they've shared
all their photos here. And most of the time,
they have pretty good fleet lists. So if you
want to put in, in the search bar, if you want
to put in N... 279GX. Say I spotted a Global
X plane. That's one of them. I can search it
and then you will scroll down to the bottom and
where it says Global X. You can click where it
says Global X and scroll down and it should give
you an entire fleet list. Fleet lists, current
fleet lists, historic fleet lists. And these
are generally pretty accurate. You know, like
Wikipedia, it's mostly right. It's not always
right. It's not an official source, so I wouldn't
use it as my only source for reporting. But it's
mostly right. Another thing that you can do is
that the FAA also publishes part 135 fleet lists,
so every charter carrier and the list of all
of the tail numbers in their fleets. But I will
say that they're supposed to publish that once
a month and they haven't been doing that in Trump
too. I think the last time that they published
it was in February and it wasn't very accurate.
That one seems to be old. So that is not perfect
either. Okay. And then another thing is the FAA
registry. That's going to be... That's just a
searchable website that the FAA has to get information
on every tail number in civil aviation. That
can be really useful. That will tell you the
aircraft's owners, which often do not correspond
to the charter airline that's flying them, but
can be a rich source of information. So other
resources you can use for flight tracking in
general, LiveATC .net has air traffic control
recordings. And there is an archive function,
but it only goes back 24 hours. So you got to
get there fast. I only use this if I suspect
a flight has had some type of emergency and I'd
like to try to hear more about what is going
on. So last November, I got a tip that in a Velo
ICE flight, had a cabin depressurization, and
I was able to get the ATC recording to confirm
that and to report that there were six people
who were injured. And then the last thing I'll
say is ACARS. I'm just going to touch on that
a little bit. ACARS are like text messages that
the flight deck and the ground can send to one
another and come up on a little printout. There
is a website. It's sbg .airframes .io, where
you can search ACARS. Is it TBG or SBG? JJ, did
I get that wrong? TBG works. OK, great. Thank
you. bg .airframes .io. Thank you, JJ. And I'll
just say that for ACARS, you have to search ACARS
by hex. So you will need the hex numbers for
that. I don't use ACARS much, but I did use it
for a story I did for Rolling Stone last fall
about a military ICE flight. The military doesn't
do many flights for ICE, but they have done some.
And this particular flight, they had gone completely
dark. They weren't transmitting any signals at
all and became undetectable, but they did send
some ACARS. And the ACARS said, what cities they
were landing in. So I was still able to report
where that plane landed in West Africa. Okay,
so some tools for learning more about ice flights.
So first, there's this amazing new tool called
habeas flight watch. This is the habeas flight
watch dashboard. This is the work of JJ and DC
and some activists in New England called Lexington
Alarm. and they have really good coding skills.
So JJ tracks flights every day. You'll see him
posting on Blue Sky about them a lot. And he
has gotten to a point where he can see their
schedules and predict their movements. And he
was putting this on Blue Sky, and he is also
constantly getting messages from attorneys and
activists and journalists saying, hey, is there
going to be an ICE flight to this city today?
And so they basically built this dashboard with
the predicted schedule in it. So it automatically
updates once the actual flight data comes up
and the flight starts. And so, you know, one
of the things that we've seen with combating
ICE is that habeas partitions are like one of
the most important tools. So when ICE captures
someone, They want to fly them down to one of
the detention centers in the South as fast as
they can. The federal courts there are going
to rule in ISIS favor much more. And most of
the time the immigrants will have to get a new
lawyer. Now they have to get a new lawyer while
in prison in an area that they're not familiar
with. And so it just becomes much more difficult
to fight your case. So, you want to get a habeas
petition filed before they get taken. So, I know
a lot of immigration attorneys are really overwhelmed
right now. So, this is a tool. So, if you live
in Boston and you find out that one of your clients
has been captured, you can look at the, it's
going to be the hand scum one, bed, yes, sorry,
Bedford. It's the BED. And you can say, okay.
There are no iSlide schedule today. I can hold
on a second until I have a minute until I get
this petition in. And if let's say you're in
Richmond and then click on the red one that says
RIC. There's one coming on the way right now.
And so I need to get the petition in immediately.
And then if you scroll down to the bottom of
this thing where it says record. So another thing
that's really important is that if the plane
is already in the air with your client on it,
they're still in your jurisdiction until the
plane lands in Alexandria or wherever they're
going. This produces a flight record that you
can put in the filing to say they were still
in the air, they're in our jurisdiction, and
then ICE has to bring them back. So, you know,
it was started mostly to help immigration attorneys.
I think they've been beta testing it, so they
haven't been super public with it, but they are
now. So share this far and wide with everyone
you know. And then I know activists and journalists
have been using it a lot too. So if you want
to organize an ICE flight watch in your city
where you are watching how many people are being
taken onto the flight, that's something that
you can use this tool to help with that. And
then, yeah, so then also a lot of you know or
know of Tom Cartwright. He is just an amazing
flight tracker. He's a retired JP Morgan executive
who just got really involved in advocacy for
migrants. And starting in 2020, he started producing
these monthly reports of every ICE flight that
he had tracked that month. And ICE doesn't have
any public records that they're sharing. So this
is basically the only records that we have of
ICE's activities, ICE's flights, going back to
2020. And then last summer, he retired, retired,
and handed his operation over to Human Rights
First. So Human Rights First produces really
great reports, monthly reports, full of information,
Um, that if you're just getting started tracking
ice flights, I really encourage you to like pour
over those reports and you can learn a lot. And
then, um, the last thing I will say is, uh, my
white, my website, ilianbrotkell .com. If you
scroll down a little bit and you'll see the map
with the green countries. This is my. third country
removal tracker. So I'm tracking every known
third country removal that ISIS done. These are
the, they're not really deportations, but these
are when they send someone, a migrant to a country
that they have no ties to. And those are happening
under a lot of different circumstances. You know,
the best case scenario is Costa Rica, where they're
actually being offered resettlement. in Costa
Rica. Most of the time that isn't happening.
Most of the time, these countries are just forcing
people to return back to their countries of Oregon,
which is called pain refoulement. It's a human
rights violation. It's against US and international
law, but we are still doing a lot of them, at
least 14 ,000 of them so far in Trump too. And
then the sort of worst case scenario is East
Rotini, formerly known as Swaziland. where they're
just holding them in a maximum security prison
indefinitely. And yeah, if you're an activist,
a researcher, an immigration attorney, or an
independent journalist, you are more than welcome
to contact me at any time if you ever have any
questions about a flight or if you're afraid
a client is about to be deported, et cetera.
I'm on Blue Sky and my signal is thebrockpale
.44. And with that, I'll take your questions.
I hope that was helpful. Thank you and apologies
about my navigation skills as you were trying
to point me towards... No, you said great. It's
like real teaching. No, thank you so much for
taking us through all of that. And obviously
I know some people within here are familiar with
some of those tools, but it's always useful to
have a little refresher. Again, if you like this
subject, we do have channels within here. to
talk about that subject and practice the skills
that have just been described. Aviation is one
of them. And then we also have one that looks
particularly at US immigration and customs enforcement
actions named as such. Daniel Kim said, if your
local area doesn't have robust monitoring activities
like the folks in Minnesota, is there a way to
figure out how many people were in deportation
planes any given day? And if so, what would that
process look like in determining an estimated
number? So how do you estimate how many people
are likely to be on the planes themselves? Is
that possible if there isn't robust monitoring
activities in that area? No, it's not possible
unless there's someone actually watching it.
It's not. You can estimate. So, you know, 737
has about 150 and 160 seats. And on every ICE
flight, there are a ton of guards. So they'll
generally have anywhere between 10 and 40 contract
security guards and ICE agents on each flight.
So, yeah. So the max would be, you know, 110,
120. on a 737, but it can, you know, I've seen
eight. So it really runs the gamut. Now I will
say in Seattle, Seattle is really interesting.
Boeing Field, the county is King County that
Seattle is in, and the Boeing Field Airport,
ICE was using that for years, and the King County
executive kicked him out. said, we don't want
you doing this here. It was a whole court case.
And then the courts ruled that you can't kick
the federal government out of a public use airport.
And that includes their contractors. So the King
County executive said, fine, if you're going
to do ice flights here, then they have to be
on camera. So there's a live stream that you
can watch of every single ice flight loading
at Boeing Field. And it's really useful to sort
of see what they're like, to see the way that
everyone is shackled, to see the way that they
treat people in wheelchairs. It hopefully prevents
some of the worst abuses, knowing that they have
a camera on them, although there are videos where
you can see them abusing migrants, even in Seattle.
You know, one thing that I would say is that,
you know, find out who owns, who governs the
airport in your city that is taking ICE flights,
and then, you know, start insisting that a camera
be set up. If you don't have a big network of
activists who can be there, you walk them with
your own eyes, or if they're in an area that
isn't public, easily they are, and they will
know where to walk them to. where you can walk
them from a public place. But yeah, I think getting
live streams, especially in blue cities and blue
states, for all of these is extremely important.
I love the uptick on live streams at the moment.
It's really useful for a number of different
investigations. Daniel actually asked to follow
up on that. Is it possible to count retroactively?
For example, I want to figure out how many detained
people flew out of the airport. Assuming I know
which airports were used starting from June the
6th, 2025 to today. Have you ever had to do that
retroactively? Yeah, I mean, I've done that for
my own airport, DWI, Baltimore. I live nearest
to that airport. I've witnessed probably five.
But I went back using, I mean, it took forever,
but I did go back to January 20th, 2025 and checked
the tail numbers for every ICE aircraft that
I'm aware of and made a spreadsheet of every
single one that has landed at BWI. And so it
was basically like four or five of them until
Oh, last August, I would say, is when they started
doing twice a week. And then there have been
surges and drop -offs. Yeah, you can go back.
And on Flight Radar 24 Premium, you can only
go back to one year. And then ADS -B Exchange
goes back to 2020. I have to say, JJ has been
dropping some amazing resources in the chat.
I will make sure that they are all mentioned
in the description of the podcast, including
that Seattle livestream that they've just now
linked to. Thank you so much for that. We've
been talking about the ease and the... demonstrated
how a layman can use some of these tools. But
how much of your research balances on your knowledge
and experience as a flight attendant? Are there
things from that previous job that have helped
you better understand potential violations in
these cases? Yeah, I mean, that's mostly got
to do with the federal aviation regulations that
are being violated on every single ice flight,
because they're all shackled. You know, every
flight attendant, your main obsession is keeping
the aisle clear and your passengers unencumbered
so that if they have to evacuate an emergency,
they can do so within 90 seconds. So if everyone
on board is shackled at the ankles, that can't
happen. We know that there have been, we know
of five emergency evacuations that have happened
on ICE flights. between, I believe it was 2014
and 2021 because of some court filings and some
discovery. And we only know the evacuation times
for two of those. One of those was two and a
half minutes. The other was seven and a half
minutes. There was also another emergency where
they didn't evacuate in that accident. They absolutely
should have. The cabin filled up with smoke and
everyone on that plane could have been killed.
It's lucky that they weren't. So yeah, I mean,
the thing that really motivates me with this
reporting is how angry I am as a former flight
attendant that these people are not able to respond
to an emergency and care for themselves. From
talking to ICER flight attendants, I know that
they're being told, if you have to evacuate,
just save yourself and let these people die.
They're not being told how to evacuate shackled
people. And I know from the you know, the Avello
depressurization, the six people that were injured.
I don't know if those were passengers, guards,
or crew members, but I do know that they were
injuries to their sinuses. And if you're shackled
with a waist chain, you can't reach for your
oxygen masks. So, you know, these sinus injuries
aren't serious, but they're very painful. And
it could have, those could have been caused because
they couldn't reach their oxygen masks. Yeah.
So I mean, I also have just sort of a general
sense of like when a crew is going to time out.
And so, you know, they're going to be switching
crews and going to layover cities. And, you know,
I had a sense of that. And then talking to some
of these ISA or flight attendants later, it's
like, yeah, that is where the crew is going.
I hope that answered the question. Yeah. And
it's really useful to understand the patterns
as well of whereabouts these fights are taking
place. Just being able to kind of watch central
airports and call signs, as you mentioned, is
really, really useful knowledge just to have
in terms of research. Have there been attempts
by the government or airlines to try and obscure?
some of the data that you're trying to use to
track them now that they know that there's groups
actively monitoring this, or is that against
legal rules? Like, is there ways that they can
obscure the data that you're trying to access?
And how's that happened? Have you seen that go
up in terms of recent development? There are
ways. They're rarely used. You wouldn't want
to use it a lot. You wouldn't want to use it
for all ice flights just because that would risk
all of aviation safety and, you know, pilots
just wouldn't let that happen. I mean, I do know
that, you know, there was the flight I talked
about earlier. One military ice flight had its
signals turned completely off. Others have changed
into modes that are, you know, a little harder
to track. There have been incidents that I haven't
fully reported out where they're using alternative
hex codes. That's only happened once that I'm
aware of. And that could have been because of
a malfunction just as easily as trying to obscure.
And I was still able to figure out where that
plane landed through other methods. And so I
wouldn't say that they're doing that globally.
One thing that I am very concerned about is,
you know, you may have read that ICE is buying
its own planes because they want to do their
own removal flights instead of relying on charters.
And, you know, I have the N numbers for all of
those planes and in general, like government
planes, you know, the FBI jet or whatever, like
it's still a civil aircraft. It's not military.
They're not supposed to be turning off their
signals. But at the end of the day, like government
can kind of do what it wants to. So I do worry
that they're trying to buy these planes because
they want to go dark. It hasn't happened yet,
but yes, I do worry about that. No, but I would
love it if they did. I do want to say one thing.
Ireland, you know, people are very organized
in Ireland. And, you know, there's a thing called
Shannon Watch that has been tracking military
aircraft that land at Shannon for years. And
they're great. I mean, they're able to determine
if a plane had weapons on it that are going to
Israel. They have a list of all of their rendition
flights during the global war on terror that
refueled at Shannon. And ICE flights do occasionally
attract, I think, eight of them that have landed
at Shannon. And they'll be there. They'll be
watching. They are trying to get their laws enforced
there and get police to search the planes there
and enforce human rights regulations there. It
hasn't happened yet. So they call the cops every
time. and ice flight lanes there. So far they
haven't been successful, but they are trying.
Thanks for that additional information. Yes,
it's amazing to hear that there are communities
out there trying to prevent this. As I was just
saying, there's a couple of more resources that
have been mentioned in the chat as well. Lemonador
said the new app from ATC .com aka Enhanced Radar
supports a degree of search that lets you find
ATC broadcasts. where that call sign is mentioned
across frequencies. They have much less coverage
than live ADC. We talked earlier about the need
for historical data. Bellingcat built Turnstone,
which is an aggregator for ADS -B data for multiple
aircraft over time. So you can search your flights
across two areas of interest at once and across
time. It's possible to interrogate the baseline
level of movement and spot unusual patterns using
that. So I'll make sure to drop that in the description
of the podcast and in the chat in a second as
well. Because there's so many people trying flight
tracking for the first time, particularly with
deportation flights front of mind, is there any
concerns of people misunderstanding data on these
sites? And have you seen any cases where that's
happened where misinformation has been spread
because people have misunderstood? the data that
they found on these sites. Yeah, I don't know
about misinformation, but a hobbyist did contact
me recently saying, I think I found something.
I think Delta is doing deportation flights. No,
it was American. I think American is doing deportation
flights. Look, they are going out of this city
and they're going to this place. And one of the
things that I know from just watching planes
over a long time is that there's a repair facility
at this city in Mexico. And so he thought that
that was a deportation flight. And they're saying,
no, no, no, that plane's going to get repaired.
And you can tell by the call signs. They ferried
there, so they were using Americans. um, ferry
flight call signs. And then it was there for
two weeks, which a plane wouldn't be there for
two weeks. If it was a deportation, it would
go right back. And so that plane was broken and
was getting fixed. Um, in terms of misinformation
spreading, I don't think any flight data was
used for this, but there is a rumor, um, and
I have this in my ICER FAQ on my website. There
is a rumor that went around, especially last
summer, that they're throwing people out of planes.
And there's no evidence of that. And I'm not
saying that's not happening because I think ICE
would never do that. I think they would. But
it's just not possible. So first of all, they
would have to be on a military plane. Charter
planes can't open their doors mid -flight. It's
physically not possible. And the rumor was like,
look, these five bodies washed up in Italy. And
that's actually about the migrants that go from
North Africa to Europe on boats, and they get
killed by smugglers and thrown overboard. had
nothing to do with American military or American
migrants. There's no flight data at all to support
that this would be happening. And so, like I
said, I don't put anything past ICE, but that
rumor is completely untrue. It started on TikTok
also with someone who has no aviation experience
at all. The best rumours start on TikTok, unfortunately.
There's still quite a lot of useful things in
the chat, which I'll make sure to think, including
the link to your websites, which will be in the
description of this podcast. Before we go, I
just wanted to quickly recap in terms of identifying
an ICE -associated flight or a deportation flight.
What constitutes sufficient evidence for you?
What are you looking for specifically in terms
of key pointers for these flights? For those
who want to go away after this and maybe start
digging into these types of flights. The trips
are all going to start and end in ICE Flight
Hub City. And so that is going to be Mesa, Arizona,
El Paso, Harlingen, Texas. And then the main
one is Alexandria, Louisiana. I think there are
a couple going out of Jacksonville now too. And
yeah, so they're all going to be going in and
out of a hub city. They are all going to have
commonalities in the call signs. And then the
flight patterns are generally out and back. And
they don't have long layovers in any of the cities
that they land in, generally about two hours.
And then you can always check with me or with
JJ or Nick Benson, who's ottergoose .net on Blue
Sky, who's an amazing flight tracker out of Minnesota.
And yeah. So, I mean, a good way to get started,
I think, would just be to watch all of the planes
that leave out of Alexandria, Louisiana in a
day, you know, using the archive button on ADSB
Exchange. And then when a plane takes off, just
look at it. They'll go, oh, this is Eastern Airlines.
Are they an ice flight provider? Yes, they are.
Oh, this is Delta. This is just a Delta flight.
You know, so it's Global X, Eastern Airlines,
Eastern Air Express, Key Lime Air, Air Wisconsin,
Bighorn Airways was doing things for a while,
although I think they might've stopped, CSI Aviation,
Journey Aviation, Palin Air, and sometimes the
military. But the Coast Guard stopped about a
month and a half ago. Super useful. And as someone's
put in the chat, you can also help by building
or buying an ADS -B feeder as well, and provide
that flight tracking data for ADS -B Exchange
and FlightAware and other platforms. As mentioned,
I know a couple of people in this server have
such devices. and they are super super useful
for open source reporting and flight tracking
so please do also consider that. Unfortunately
we're at time and I don't want to be because
I would love to keep discussing this topic forever.
If you're like me and you want to continue the
conversation you can do in hashtag aviation or
in hashtag Both of those channels are appropriate
for conversation on this topic. But for now,
Gillian, I have to say goodbye. How can people
reach out to you if they want to continue this
talk? Perhaps have a question for you that's
not suitable for Discord. And if you want to
send me Proton, it's gibrakel at proton .me.
Amazing. I'll make sure to include those in the
podcast description as well. Thank you so much,
everybody, for listening. Apologies about the
tech issues at the beginning of the talk. And
thank you for sticking by us. And in two weeks'
time, we'll be back with another Stage Talk.
All right. Thank you, everybody. Thank you for
listening to the Stage Talk. If you'd like to
catch a stage tour live where you can ask the
guest questions, join the Bellingcat Discord
server by visiting www .discord .gg slash Bellingcat.
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