SEATTLE – Regularly, immigration advocates meet at King County International Airport in Seattle to observe and report on deportation flights. Initially, these flights could be tracked through publicly available websites.

However, recently, it appears airlines are using fake call signs and hiding plane identifiers from tracking platforms, complicating efforts to monitor the flights just as deportation numbers soar under President Donald Trump. Advocates have found alternative tracking methods, like sharing intel with other groups and utilizing open-source data that follows aircraft signals.

These efforts assist people in locating deported loved ones amidst limited disclosures from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement about flight specifics. Media outlets have also employed this tracking data in their reporting.

Tom Cartwright, once a financial officer at J.P. Morgan and now an immigration activist, noted 1,214 deportation flights in July alone — the highest since he began tracking in 2020. About 80% of these flights are managed by three airlines: GlobalX, Eastern Air Express, and Avelo Airlines. These flights transport immigrants to other airports for international connections or directly across borders, mainly to Central American countries and Mexico.

Since Trump’s second term began, Cartwright has tracked 5,962 deportations up to July, marking a 41% rise from 1,721 flights in the same period in 2024. These numbers cover larger deportation hubs but exclude smaller ones like King County International Airport, known as Boeing Field. This data also records 68 military deportation flights since January, with 18 in July alone, many headed to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

As the task grew more demanding, Cartwright, at 71, alongside his group, Witness at the Border, handed over operations recently to Human Rights First, which initiated an endeavor titled “ICE Flight Monitor.”

“His work brings essential transparency to U.S. government actions impacting thousands of lives and stands as a powerful example of citizen-driven accountability in defense of human rights and democracy,” Uzrz Zeya, Human Rights First’s chief executive officer, said.

The airlines did not respond to multiple email requests for comment. ICE is part of the Department of Homeland Security, which would not confirm any security measures it has taken.

La Resistencia, a Seattle-area nonprofit immigration rights group, has monitored 59 flights at Boeing Field and five at the Yakima airport in 2025, surpassing its 2024 total of 42.

Not all are deportation flights. Many are headed to or from immigration detention centers or to airports near the border. La Resistencia counted 1,023 immigrants brought in to go to the ICE detention center in Tacoma, Washington, and 2,279 flown out, often to states on the U.S.-Mexico border.

“ICE is doing everything in its power to make it as hard as possible to differentiate their contractors’ government activities from other commercial endeavors,” organizer Guadalupe Gonzalez told The Associated Press.

Airlines can legally block data

The Federal Aviation Administration allows carriers to block data like tail numbers from public flight tracking websites under the Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed program, or LADD, said Ian Petchenik, a spokesman for FlightRadar24.

“Tail numbers are like VIN numbers on cars,” Gonzalez said.

Planes with blocked tail numbers no longer appear on websites like FlightRadar24 or FlightAware. The tracker page identifies these them as “N/A – Not Available” as they move across the map and when they are on the tarmac. Destinations and arrival times aren’t listed.

Carriers have occasionally used LADD for things like presidential campaigns, but in March, FlightRadar24 received LADD notices for more than a dozen aircraft, Petchenik said. It was unusual to see that many aircraft across multiple airlines added to the blocking list, he said. The blocked planes were often used for ICE deportations and transfers, he said.

Of the 94 ICE Air contractor planes that La Resistencia was tracking nationwide, 40 have been unlisted, Gonzalez said.

Similar things happened with the call signs airlines use to identify flights in the air, Gonzalez said.

Airlines use a combination of letters in their company name and numbers to identify their planes. GlobalX uses GXA, for example. But in the past few months, the ICE carriers have changed their regular call signs, making it more difficult to locate their immigration activates, he said.

Cameras at Boeing Field help volunteers track flights

King County International Airport is one of the few sites in the country where passengers can be seen getting off and on the planes, thanks to county-operated cameras. Volunteers gather each time a flight arrives to count each person and note whether they struggle on the stairs or appear to have health issues.

ICE Air operations at Boeing Field started in 2011. The county set up cameras on the tarmac in 2023 after King County Executive Dow Constantine, having unsuccessfully tried to stop the ICE flights, issued an order requiring the county to track them at the airport. The county publishes monthly statistics on them.

The cameras record immigrants arriving on buses, being searched and being led up the stairs onto the planes. On Tuesday, one man who was hunched over shuffled down the bus’ stairs and across the tarmac using a cane, then an officer helped him climb onto the plane, one step at a time.

Detainees must navigate the plane’s stairway with their ankles chained together. Their wrists are also chained, and those cuffs are connected to a chain around their waist, so they can’t raise their arms, hold the railing or take big steps, activist Stan Shikuma told the AP.

The video can be viewed live on a giant screen in a nearby building where advocates can watch people being taken off buses from the ICE Northwest detention center. It’s also livestreamed on the county website.

“They’re patted down, head to toe, mouth examined, sometimes the chains are tightened before they’re allowed to board the plane,” Shikuma said. “People coming off the plane: same treatment.”