Avelo Airlines, a budget carrier offering low fares to a growing number of U.S. cities and Puerto Rico, recently announced that it had signed a contract with the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security to fly deportation flights out of Mesa, Arizona that will begin on May 12.
One of Avelo’s two transit hubs is New Haven, Connecticut’s Tweed airport, which two years ago welcomed the airline and awarded the company a state subsidy on jet fuel. New Haven, which considers itself a welcoming city with protections in place for undocumented immigrants, reacted with fury. New Haven’s Mayor Justin Elicker, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, and local immigrant rights advocacy groups have all condemned the deportation contract. An online boycott of the airline has collected over 34,000 signatures. Avelo’s CEO Andrew Levy responded to the controversy by stating his airline had also flown deportation flights for the Biden administration.
Since Avelo’s government contract was made public, two large rallies have been organized at New Haven’s Tweed airport calling on the company to drop its deportation business. Protests have also spread to at least four other airports in Wilmington, Delaware; Rochester, New York; Salem/Willamette, Oregon and Burbank, California. Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, a New Haven resident, spoke at the April 17 Tweed protest, which was recorded by Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus.
How many of you remember what the hell you were doing four years ago, right? You don’t. So in the four years that this airline has been here, you would think that its leadership would’ve done its homework and taken time to learn about New Haven, our city and our values. Have they done that? Have they done that? No. Are we going to teach them about our values? Yes. I’m going to share my top four things that I want Avelo to know about New Haven and our values. And feel free to add on to that during this rally.
The first thing I want Avelo to know is that we are a welcoming city. Are we a welcoming city? Yes. We have a rich and proud history of welcoming immigrants and refugees. So much so that we are recognized nationally as a cutting edge city with amazing policies that others around the nation have copied. So Avelo, take note.
The second thing that I want Avelo to know is that we have a track record of protecting immigrants when ICE has come to town. Yes we do. Do we? Every time ICE has come to town to break doors down and drag our immigrant brothers and sisters out and arrest them and detained them, what have we done? We have kicked them out of town. Are we going to continue to do that? Will we ever be complicit? We’ll never be complicit and neither should Avelo.
The third thing, and I know that we’ve got some public officials here, the third thing that I want Avelo to know is that every single time that our public officials have gotten behind us and coalesced on immigrant rights, guess what, we have won. Whether it was the ID card fight, whether it was the raids of 2007 or efforts to protect immigrants in sanctuaries, we fought and we won every one of those fights. And guess what? We’re going to win this fight as well.
And finally, this is my favorite one because I see myself on this one. This is also what I want Avelo to know, which is that our activists, we are a bunch of stubborn bad asses. We’re relentless, we are stubborn. And you know how I know? Because I’m one of them. We will not back down. We’ll not be dissuaded. We’re going to organize, organize, organize.
We’re going to fight and we’re going to win. Who’s with me? We’ll not give up until each and every one of our demands are met. This campaign is now national in scope. So what should Avelo expect? They should expect more pressure, more attention. Avelo, listen, it’s never too late. History is watching. Do the Right Thing.
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