Donald Trump

The mass deportation agenda of President Donald Trump has an surprising interested parties: Bill Gates.

The magnate and multibillonarium philanthropist of technology has a large part of a key service provider for immigration flights.

And now, with the new funds of the Congress and an aggressive thrust of the White House, more and more immigration flights are taking off, transporting immigration detainees both within the United States and in their countries of origin, or, in some cases, to places that had never been before.

Gates’ connection with the US detention and deportation machine. It is a company called Signature Aviation. Signature calls herself “the largest network in the world of private aviation terminals”, and is a key piece in the daily machinery of the Trump immigration application apparatus.

Private Charter carrter subcontracted for the application of immigration and customs to transport immigration detainees, part of a network known as “ice air”, a reference to ICE Air operations of the National Security Department, uses Signature services daily. As a fixed base operator, or FBO, Signature supplies land crews, aviation fuel, shipping and space in the hangar of airplanes in hundreds of airports around the world, mainly in the United States.

The private firm that has the assets of Gates and Gates Foundation Trust, Cascade Investment, increased its participation in the company to 30% in 2021, when you and two members bought directly firm for $ 4.7 billion. Human rights defenders, aircraft trackers and activists who monitor deportation flights, as well as in aviation and logistics companies that benefit from them, say that Gates’ participation in signature disagrees with their humanitarian work, including the support of the Gates Foundation to a large number of non -profit organizations focused on immigration. Without FBO as a signature, they say, Trump’s mass deportation agenda would be trapped on the ground.

Gates himself has not publicly commented on the crucial role of the firm’s aviation in the service of ICE Air flights. Neither the Gates Foundation nor the Cascade Asset Management Company, which supervises the investment in Cascade, responded to multiple requests for comments.

In an airport, Signature seems to have worked to make its brand less visibly associated with immigration flights. Last month, a set of firm shipping stairs in Seattle, where the county government established cameras in 2023 to monitor immigration flights, obtained a new accessory: two cardboard sheets, recorded on the company’s logos.

Lindsey Wasson/News

The FBO “are critical, obviously, because they provide fuel and other services, while the plane makes its stops,” said Tom Cartwright, a retired financial executive who has tracked ice flights for almost six years.

Cartwright estimated that at the end of June, 95% of ICE Air flights that had tracked were operated by charter companies, with military and coastal guard that are used for the rest. That does not include a commercial flight account used to deport people, he said, but in fiscal year 2017, Ice Air used charter flights to eliminate or transfer to 181,317 people, compared to only 8,288 that were removed on commercial flights, According to a general report by Inspector DHS 2019.

“In this case, when they are making 1,100 flights a month, that is a fairly significant piece of the operation, so they are absolutely critical,” he said about the planes that have immigration detainees. “Without a fixed base operator, I am not sure that this system really works.”

In Recent report Covering local connections with alleged human rights violations derived from the Trump administration immigration application agend for yearsspecifically called the Gates signature investment.

“In Washington, our most famous philanthropist increases its investments in part by supporting an accomplice company of gross human rights abuses, potentially amounts to the level of crimes against humanity,” the report claimed.

Signing at work

To inform this story, News themezone toured the government records and the plane’s location data, compiled reports from the activist activists on the ground and combined aviation photographs with airplanes known for transporting ice detainees. Even so, Ice Air operates largely in the shadows, and many key players, including Aviation Signature, did not answer detailed questions about their operations.

So we wanted to see the process for ourselves. On August 31, News themezone witnessed the firm’s aviation in Action. In the asphalt of the Newark Liberty International Airport, a couple of hundreds of yards from the private terminal of Signature, a set of fuel and fuel stairs of the signature brand was found protests and boycott of potential passengers about Your work with ice air. Like another Hazelnut Airplanes Working on ice air flights, this plane, with the N801XT tail number, was recently completely white, erasing any Prominent Avelo branding.

One by one, 16 people dressed in white and gray, and chained in the wrists, waist and ankles, they limited the plane and on the firm’s aviation stairs, unable to reach the handrail on the stairs. In the asphalt, the second man in the line dragged his feet slightly, taking unequal steps when his head fell, making him look greater than the rest. The plane had just finished a two and a half hours flight from Alexandria, Louisiana, a Central Center For ice air flights, which means that men had likely It has been chained for several hours in a row. The detainees waited in the asphalt while they were prosecuted in vacuits of the sprinter with flashing police lights. A fuel tank truck with the exclusive brand climbed into the plane, and the personnel on the floor transported plastic mesh bags acquaintance to be used for the personal belongings of the detainees. Finally, accompanied by police vehicles of the Port Authority, the caravan left the asphalt, it is probably aimed at the nearby ice detention facilities.

Two weeks earlier, News themezone saw a similar scene, when a plane operated by Eastern Air Express, the same CNN plane recently stained Ferrying to people in ice custody met similar fanfare in Newark. Police vehicles with flashing lights also approached that plane, including one that looked similar to a transport bus above archive transporting detainees outside Delaney Hall, the infamous Immigration jail.

In both cases, after approximately an hour on the ground, the planes continued on their way through the country, transporting people in ice custody to other detention facilities, and for some, in their best deportation, according to an observer of activist airplanes that accompanies the nickname “JJ in DC” in Bluesky and helped News themezone on track the aircraft.

“In Washington, our most famous philanthropist makes its investments grow in part by supporting an accomplice of gross human rights abuses, potentially ascending to the level of crimes against humanity.”

– Recent Report of the Human Rights Center of the University of Washington

Such scenes are now common throughout the country. But they are not new. For more than a decade, private aviation contractors have handled tens of thousands of ice air flights, according to the cardwright count, which can collectively transfer or eliminate hundreds of thousands of people annually.

The recent video of the King County cameras at the Boeing Field-King County International Airport in Seattle shows a gloomy parade of detainees. One climbs a set of lady stairs while chaining and holding a cane. Another, also chained, the detainees are generally even during flights, is mistreated by several guards who direct him to the plane; A few feet before the staircase of Signature, the group stumbles and the man falls on the asphalt.

“The use of restrictions on detainees during deportation flights is a standard ice protocol and an essential measure to guarantee the safety and well -being of the detainees and the officers/agents who accompany them,” said a DHS spokesman not identified to News themezone in a statement. “Our practices are aligned with those followed by other relevant authorities and is totally in line with the established legal standards.”

“ICE undertakes to promote safe, insurance and human environments for those in our custody very seriously,” the statement added. “ICE Air operations flights are sensitive to the application of the Law. ICE makes flights throughout the United States daily. For operational security purposes, ICE does not discuss continuous or future operations.”

Illustration: News themezone; Photo: Will Tooke/News themezone

Activists who work to end the presence of ICE Air in Seattle have focused on the work of Signature as a service provider for charter flights.

“The presence of firm is essential for ice to be inside the airport, because without having a fixed base operator to serve the airplanes, they cannot land there, and no one else is doing this type of work,” said Guadalupe González, flight monitoring coordinator for resistance, an activist group led by immigrants in the state of Washington who seeks to finish the detention and dependence on immigrants. “The firm’s aviation is specifically those responsible for attending the ice in Boeing Field.”

González said that resistance volunteers, who observe ice air transfers in person in Boeing Field, have reported in recent years to have seen the detainees tied in the “wrapping” restriction system, a type of full -body restriction device that has been the subject of scrutiny in the past. More commonly, González said, people were made with mobility problems to climb the stairs of Signature to an Ice Air flight.

Not having a presence at Boeing Field, González said: “Draw [ICE’s] The efforts to deport as many people as possible, or, at least, make it more expensive. ”

Signature Aviation did not answer a long list of questions about their practices, including its participation in Ice Air. Instead, the company sent a statement of a sentence.

“Our FBO must accept or Flights that comply with the law, FAA regulations and contract requirements in airports financed by the federal government, “said Rosanna Fiske, head of the company’s global corporate affairs.

Fiske did not answer the monitoring questions about the nature of the firm’s obligations, including the terms of the contracts that it may have signed with the operators of Charter Air Ice.

‘I don’t want Bill’s name in the headlines’

Gates is a significant shareholder in the firm’s aviation. Cascade Investment LLC, the company holder of the assets of Gates and the Gates Foundation, bought for the first time a part of the company’s predecessor, BBA Aviation, in 2009. In 2021, a bidding war broke out on the company, and the largest individual shareholder of Gates, after the firm, the largest individual shareholder, with 19% of stay, join forces with Blackstone Group and Glory Infrastructure Buy A Buy to Itlight. (Blackrock acquired Global Infrastructure Partners in 2024).

Working together, the three companies bought a signature for $ 4.7 billion, with a cascade ending with 30% of the company.

Cascade Investment LLC is supervised by Cascade Asset Management Company. The investment director of that firm is Michael Larson, who has the “confidence and complete faith” of Gates, Gates said in 2014, at a party he organized by celebrating Larson’s twentieth anniversary administering his assets. The Wall Street Journal reported at that time that his agreement was “simple: Mr. Larson earns money and Mr. Gates reveals it.” Cascade Investment is located in the same Kirkland personal park, Washington, as Gates’ personal office, said the New York Times in a 2021 story. The Cascade mandate, a former nameless employee told the Times for the same story, was: “We do not want Bill’s name in the headlines.”

Cascade’s work on behalf of Gates has appeared in the news before.

For example, when the Earth’s report revealed in 2021 that Gates was “the owner of the largest private farmland in the United States”, of what they were really talking, as NBC News described it later, it was the cultivation lands “through a constellation of companies that are linked to all the linked ones. [Bill and Melinda Gates’] Investment Group, Cascade Investments, based in Kirkland, Washington. “When Gates was asked about his purchases of cultivation lands, which made national news, said:” My investment group chose to do this “and” all these decisions are made by a professional investment team. ”

The same could be applied to the firm’s aviation. It is not clear how much Gates knows about his participation in the company, or if he knows that the firm plays a crucial role in Trump’s mass deportation operation.

Even so, “it would be surprising if Gates could not influence the decision to disin this particular investment,” Cartwright said, who before his retirement spent decades in JP Morgan, including as financial director of a division that covered 5,000 bank branches.

The Foundation has previously addressed concerns about its money invested in the firm’s aviation. A complaint recently filed through Ethicspoint, a public portal to present ethical concerns to the Foundation, and then shared with News themezone, accused the basis of “providing material support for immigration and the application of customs of the United States” through its signature investment.

In response, the Foundation said it did not “control or participate in the activities of the Gates Foundation Trust.” On the other hand, said the foundation, the trustee assets were “managed independently by Cascade Asset Management Company.”

Firm’s footprint

Look closely and see a signatory aviation appear in Trump’s mass deportation pipe.

In fact, the company is part of perhaps the most infamous footage of the second term of Trump so far: an “ASMR” video that glorifies the shackles and the transport of immigration detainees. The video was filmed in Boeing Field, where the number of ice flights hired, all attended by the firm aviation, has shot this year. It is also 20 minutes by car from the Gates Foundation offices.

The distinctive logo of Signature is visible at the top of a set of boarding stairs about five seconds in the clip:

Signature did not respond to News themezone’s investigation about where ICE Air flights attended, but the company has had a significant footprint in the Aviation Contractors Service hired by ICE. In 2019, an internal ice document listed the firm as the FBO designated for ice flights hired in 12 main national airports: Atlanta, Dallas, Newark, Houston, Laredo, Kansas City, Memphis, Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Chicago, San Diego, San Antonio and Denver Stoirs to another, another air.

And although it is not clear if Ice Air still uses all airports on the 2019 list, the list does not include airports where Signature has recently been seen at the service of ICE Air flights. For example, the 2019 document does not include the Boeing field of Seattle. The firm now frequently serves ice flights there, and the detainees collected at the airport have ended in the Cecot prison in El Salvador, Guantanamo Bay and South Sudan, according to the recent UWCHR report. The Human Rights Center previously obtained the 2019 Airport List that listed the FBO that ice flights attend in accordance with a request for public records to ICE.

The firm also seems to be attending immigration flights of Jacksonville, Florida. An March email with the “ice schedule this week” The ICE Group Group of Grupo Activista, which aims to “limit the speed at which ice can transport and eliminate its detainees,” the document obtained through a request for public records and shared it with News themezone. Email recipients included Jacksonville’s manager of Signature Aviation, as well as several email accounts associated with Geo Group, a private prison contractor.

In July, News 13 News Utah captured a video of apparent immigration detainees that uploaded a set of signature shipment stairs at Salt Lake City International Airport.

And Rolling Stone recently saw a plane from the fuel and ice detainees coast guard at Baltimore/Washington International Airport. Independent journalist Gillian Brockell, who wrote the story of Rolling Stone, told News themezone that the signatory aviation replenished the plane.

Signature is also the only FBO at Buffalo Niagara International Airport, ICE said. The airplanes that transport immigration detainees pass through that airport once or twice a week, according to Cartwright, who is currently transition from their work to the first human rights group.

‘Dehumanize many degrees’

Several entities involved with Gates Air Ice Air investment proclaim their commitment to human rights.

Signature Aviation itself says that it is committed to “refrain from coercion and never cause damage to anyone” and that measures are required “to confirm that our businesses and supply chains are free from modern slavery and human trafficking.” Another company policy requires that suppliers “never use, support or participate in forced or contract, or practices that involve coercion, deception or abuse of power, including human trafficking, slavery and child labor.” As part of his efforts to combat human trafficking, he says he works with the National Security Department. (Ice falls under the scope of DHS).

Cascade says that it takes “a value -oriented approach” to invest money for Gates and Gates Foundation Trust, and that one of its objectives is “to protect the invoice and trust acting legally, honest, ethical and integrity, safeguard their assets and information.” He points out that “neither Cascade nor confidence plays a role in the subsidy or operations of the Foundation” and that the Foundation “does not control or participate in the investment activities of the trust”.

The Gates Foundation says that its mission is to “create a world where each person has the opportunity to live a healthy and productive life”, and the Foundation has granted subsidies to multiple non -profit organizations focused on immigration.

Photo: Matt Shuham/News themezone

The experiences of immigration detainees who travel in the ice air, particularly the use of shackles by ICE, which unite their wrists and ankles, apparently contrast with those commitments.

The shackles “felt very disrespectful, dehumanizing many degrees,” Mahmoud Khalil, the imprisoned Palestinian activist threatened with deportation for his beliefs, reminded Zeteo after his release of ice custody in June.

After more than a day of travel, “when I arrived in Jena, [Louisiana, home to an infamous ICE jail,] I couldn’t walk because my leg was swollen with the shackles, ”Khalil added.

Deportation flight passengers have alleged “the use of epithets and racist insults, and an approximate physical treatment when addressing”, as well as, in more isolated cases, “the balls, the use of force vests, verbal abuse and threats, and the denial of access to bathrooms,” according to a UWCHR summary of public records received details of the complaints.

In one case, a deportation flight to Somalia sat in an asphalt in Senegal for a full day due to technical problems, while the detainees remained chained inside and the toilets of the plane “were filled with human waste,” according to a later demand. The plane finally returned to all the detainees to the United States. (The demand was finally fired for jurisdictional reasons, and many of the people on the unfortunate flight continued to face deportation procedures).

Seattle shows private system vulnerabilities

Trusting private contractors at each stage of the deportation process creates important ice vulnerabilities, so the Trump administration can consider buying its own fleet of deportation plans.

While giant private prison companies such as Corecivic and Geo Group depend on federal contracts to survive, FBO work in different economic conditions. Most depend on travel businesses to corporate and private airplanes, they are often subject to local political pressure. For example, ground ice has encouraged pilots to write to aviation signs and “make them know that it will not buy fuel” due to their work for ice.

More than anywhere else, the Boeing de Seattle field represents how local antideport feeling can affect ICE work and slowly slow down.

In 2019, in the midst of the pressure of the local activist groups and an impressive report of UWCHR with respect to the “King County collaboration with the ice air deportation flights in Boeing Field,” ordered the executive of the then King County, Dow Constantine, ordered, among other things, that future leases in Boeing Field contain a prohibition against the private transportation Immigration The FBO for those flights at that time, modern aviation, D He argued to attend them shortly after that executive order, despite the fact that the order was ultimately blocked in the Court. Two other FBO at the airport, including Signature, also said that “they will not assume the position of modern ones in the service of ice flights,” said the Seattle Times at that time, citing the director of the airport. (Matt Dill, general manager of Modern Aviation’s location in Boeing Field, declined to comment).

“Without the help of such companies,” the document reported, “flights cannot operate at the airport. Although they can technically take off and land, [airport director John] Parrott said flights need a company to open doors, to provide stairs for passengers to turn on and out of the planes, and offer fuel. ”

Without a FBO in Seattle, ICE was forced to roll aircraft through Yakima, where the airport was smaller, more remote and homeland. In a judicial presentation, the Trump administration said it only landed at the remote airport after approaching three other “without success.”

The Trump administration also recognized at the time that this shift attacked the gears of its deportation machinery, particularly when it were people detained at the Northwest detention Center in Tacoma.

“Transporting the detainees of Tacoma to Yakima, compared to Tacoma to Boeing Field, add at least six hours of travel to the execution process of an air flight,” reads the presentation.

“In addition,” he continued, “Transport to Yakima and back often requires the use of an additional bus and two additional officers, as well as the additional costs of food and fuel March 2023, a federal judge ruled against the executive order of the county that required future FBO leases to prohibit work on deportation flights.

“At that time, Signature Aviation said: ‘Ok, we will do that business,'” recalled Angelina Snodgrass Godoy, director of Uwchr. “Since then, ice flights have resumed in Boeing Field, and are being treated by signing aviation.”

The KNKX local public radio station described the firm at that time as “the fixed base operator who agreed to attend ice flights at Boeing Field.”

By May 2, four years after ICE Air flights stopped at Boeing Field, they resumed again, according to flight records maintained by the County. Signature has been its only service provider since then, according to the same records.

“Without a fixed base operator, I am not sure that this system really works.”

– Tom Cartwright, a retired financial executive who has tracked ice flights for almost six years

For Godoy, the absence of years of years that run through Seattle shows how important are the FBO as the firm’s aviation.

“Here in Seattle, what we saw in 2019 and to date, was that when there was enough local concern, and the people who expressed outrage in this regard, that the other FBO didn’t want to do it either,” he said.

“There are companies that will say: ‘No, we don’t want this, we don’t want to partner with this.'”

Local pressure may also have recently interrupted ice air operations on the other side of the country. Last month, after the media care and the local protest for the increase in immigration flights from Hanscom Field in Bedford, Massachusetts, including specific attention to the signing aviation to attend the flights: the flights of ICE Air to that airport were stopped, instead of passing through the portsmouth international airport in Pease in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where the Signal has no presence.

“It was because the activists were so annoying, basically, to that airfield, and were so concentrated in the firm, that they decided to change to [Portsmouth International Airport] Like the center of New England, ”JJ in DC postulated News themezone, referring to the change from Massachusetts to New Hampshire.

Godoy also speculated that the change came in response to the protest.

“My impression is that, for the firm, ice flights are just a part of their business, and not most of their businesses, and when ice flights become noticeable enough, that threatens Signature’s general business, and then say ‘no thanks,'” he said.

“And it seems to me, this is speculation, because I am not aware of the discussions between the ice and the firm, as is what happened in Hanscom Field,” Godoy added. “So now, ICE will use a farther airport, which is more inconvenient for them. And they haven’t said why.”

Even so, even the apparent changes on the route may not last: two flights from Avelo Airlines Beates landed in Hanscom Field on Friday and Saturday, as shown in flight records. The airline, ice and aviation of the firm did not answer the questions about the purpose of the flights.

It’s not just Bill

The financial support behind Signature Aviation does not stop with Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation.

The annual financial reports reviewed by News themezone show that several major public pension funds are also interested in signature.

Institutional investors Blackstone and Blackrock (through the global infrastructure partners) have the rest of the company that Gates do not. And those mass companies of asset management often invest money in several funds in public pensions, non -profit organizations and university endowments.

One of those funds, a Blackrock product called Global Infrastructure Partners Fund IV, has 68 limited partners of this type, according to Pitchbook data, a private capital market database.

That includes the Public Employee Retirement System of California, a public pension that in 2023 had more than $ 350 million in the fund; the common withdrawal of the New York state; the endowment of Utah State University; the Oregon Public Employee Retirement System; the Washington State Investment Board; and more than 60 others.

Blackrock and the retirement system of California public employees declined to comment. The common withdrawal of the New York state, Oregon Investment Council (which manages OPERS investments) and the endowment of Utah State University did not respond. A WSIB spokesman told News themezone that, as a policy, he does not comment on individual holdings.

Washington’s participation was marked by UWCHR, which warned in his recent report that “public workers retirees are financed in part through investments in organizations that benefit from the detention and deportation of our neighbors.”

A handful of public pension funds are also invested in a similar Blackstone offer, called Blackstone Infrastructure Partners. They include the New Mexico State Investment Council, the Orange County Employee Retirement System, the Penylvania Public School Employee Retirement System and the Texas Teacher Retirement System, according to Pitchbook data.

Blackstone did not respond to a request for comments, nor the Investment Council of the State of New Mexico. A spokesman for the Texas Teacher Retirement System declined to comment, citing a Texas Law that prohibits the discussion of specific investments. The Orange County Employee Employee Retirement System and the Penylvanian public school employees withdrawal refused.

Azani Creeks, senior campaign and research coordinator in PESP, a non -profit surveillance organization focused on the private capital industry, told News themezone that people whose pensions trust these investments have the right to have a voice in their composition.

“You can communicate with pension fund staff and email trusts to schedule a meeting and, often, pension funds have regular meetings with periods of public comments in which you can communicate your concerns,” Creeks said.

“A handful of private capital companies, which are based on the capital of pension funds, foundations, endowments, insurance companies and other institutional investors, exert a great influence through investments in companies that provide services to detention centers for immigrants and migrant shelters in the United States.”

JJ in DC pointed out that in his work tracking immigration flights, he has been affected by how opaque is the process. The National Security Department hires its main corridor, CSI Aviation, which works with a network of subcontractors, including Globalx, Avelo and Eastern Air Express. Those companies in turn work with FBO as the signing aviation. Along the way, airplanes have become more difficult to detect, and some lose their entire external brand or are removed from public flight trackers, although their information is still available in crowdsourcing networks such as ADS-B Exchange. (Any person with the correct receiver can contribute to the site, which presents location information transmitted by individual airplanes through radio waves such as an interactive and real -time map, although not always complete, of global aviation traffic).

The result, in the end, are the dollars of taxpayers that contribute silently to the portfolios of people such as Gates and Gates Foundation Trust.

“This is a great pressure point,” JJ told DC to News themezone. “And if more people apply pressure, it will harm their operations and will have to adjust.”

Matt Shuham reported from New York. Ryan Grenoble reported from Denver.