Business is booming for Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) top deportation flight contractor. It’s a company with deep political ties — including hosting a Trump campaign rally last fall — and links to high-profile controversies, some of which POGO is revealing for the first time.
On February 28, ICE posted a previously unreported notice that it would award a no-bid contract to CSI Aviation to remove immigrants via flights. The contract is worth up to $128 million and will last for at least six months beginning on March 1, and possibly extend up to a year. ICE modified this contract last Friday to increase the number of ICE removal flights — the same day President Donald Trump signed an executive order invoking a rarely used law to justify the removal of foreign nationals associated with a Venezuelan-based gang. Some of the first ICE removal flights under this contract appear to be at the center of accusations over the last several days that the Trump administration violated a court order.
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And much more funding to the tune of billions of dollars in new revenue could be on the way for CSI Aviation through another, five-year-long ICE contract, even as a competing company alleges in recent court filings that taxpayers may end up paying hundreds of millions of dollars more than necessary to CSI on that contract.
The recent no-bid contract is the latest of numerous awards in the company’s history with ICE, amounting to a combined total of at least $1.6 billion in federal funding since 2005, although business has especially surged in recent years. CSI Aviation describes itself as a “seasoned federal contractor” that has “provided a variety of contractual services to the U.S. Government for more than 30 years,” according to its website.
Though its website does not mention ICE, that agency has been the source of most of the company’s federal revenue. New Mexico-based CSI has long worked with ICE to remove immigrants using planes, working with a network of subcontractors such as GlobalX. Last year, 74% of ICE’s 1,564 removal flights were on GlobalX planes, according to data collected by immigration activist Tom Cartwright.
GlobalX’s planes were used last weekend to remove 238 foreign nationals who are alleged to belong to the Tren de Aragua gang and 23 purported members of MS-13, another gang, to El Salvador and Honduras on flights leaving an airport in Harlingen, Texas (family members of at least four have disputed they are gang members).
Those flights occurred despite a court order blocking them, issued more than 45 minutes prior to the first flight landing. This has prompted claims that the administration deliberately disobeyed the order, which the White House has denied. The administration has also controversially cited the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to justify removing at least some of these individuals without first giving them a chance to have their cases heard by a judge. (POGO has argued the president’s use of this law is “a dangerous abuse of power.”) Another GlobalX flight for ICE earlier this year led the Brazilian government to protest the “degrading treatment” of its citizens who were removed.
CSI Aviation and GlobalX did not respond to requests for comment. An ICE spokesperson told POGO that “ICE cannot comment due to ongoing litigation.” A federal official referred POGO to the White House about the flights last weekend. The White House did not respond to a query.
Although it operates in a divisive arena of immigration enforcement, CSI Aviation has flown under the radar.
“CSI Aviation’s role in one of the most well-known alleged abuses on an ICE removal flight in late 2017 has gone unreported until now.”
Despite that low profile, CSI’s CEO, Allen Weh, and his daughter, Deborah Maestas, a former CSI president who’s listed as a corporate director on company records from last month, have found themselves embroiled in prominent political controversies. Those controversies include Weh’s role in a national scandal during the George W. Bush administration where there were allegedly improper partisan motivations for removing top Justice Department officials. Emails and an inspector general probe showed that Weh pushed the Bush White House to remove the top federal prosecutor in New Mexico. Weh did not respond to a request for comment.
More recently, Maestas was one of several “fake electors,” part of a scheme to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election after Donald Trump fiercely disputed the outcome. The so-called fake electors submitted certificates of their state’s electoral votes for Trump despite Trump’s loss in their state. Trump had repeatedly alleged widespread voter fraud, including spreading unfounded claims that undocumented immigrants were voting in large numbers. Maestas was subpoenaed by the House committee investigating the actions leading up to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. State law enforcement investigated Maestas and others and declined to prosecute. According to a report by the New Mexico attorney general’s office, Maestas and other fake electors said they were unaware of “any intent to use their certificate for unlawful or insurrectionist purposes.” Maestas did not respond to a request for comment.
But the controversies extend beyond these political scandals. Perhaps underscoring what the University of Washington’s Center for Human Rights calls “the secrecy that has surrounded the operations of ICE Air,” CSI Aviation’s role in one of the most well-known alleged abuses on an ICE removal flight in late 2017 has gone unreported until now.
“Shackled”
(Illustration: Ren Velez / POGO)
In late 2017, 92 Somali immigrants on a CSI-contracted plane were forced to stay shackled for nearly two days. The incident led to widespread news coverage and a book written on the episode.
For about 23 hours, the plane simply sat on a tarmac, and the immigrants were not allowed off. “As the plane sat on the runway, the 92 detainees remained bound, their handcuffs secured to their waists, and their feet shackled together,” according to a lawsuit brought by a group of the passengers filed in December 2017. “The guards did not loosen the shackles, even when the deportees told them that the shackles were painful because they were too tight, that their arms and legs were swollen and were bruised.”
“When the plane’s toilets overfilled with human waste, some of the detainees were left to urinate into bottles or on themselves,” the lawsuit states.
Their complaint alleges that when some tried to raise concerns they were met with abuses, such as wrapping people with harnesses, locks, and chains to immobilize them. “ICE agents wrapped some who protested, or just stood up to ask a question, in full-body restraints. ICE agents kicked, struck, or dragged detainees down the aisle of the plane, and subjected some to verbal abuse and threats,” according to the Somali immigrants’ complaint.
ICE had removed those immigrants on a CSI-contracted plane departing Texas, which stopped in the West African country of Senegal to change the flight crew before reaching the intended destination of Somalia on the other side of the continent. The plane sat so long on the tarmac in Senegal because a replacement flight crew was unable to get the legally required eight hours of rest before taking over for the second leg of the trip, due to power outages that struck their hotel. The Somali government refused to extend the period for accepting the plane. Eventually, ICE recalled the flight back to the United States, and the 92 immigrants were put in detention.
“The guards did not loosen the shackles, even when the deportees told them that the shackles were painful because they were too tight, that their arms and legs were swollen and were bruised.”
Lawsuit filed on behalf of Somali immigrants
ICE has tried to blame CSI for the incident. In a separate legal dispute between ICE and CSI distinct from the complaint brought by the Somali immigrants, ICE claimed the company should have had its replacement crew at a different hotel, or at a hotel with a backup generator, or had additional crews ready. A judge found ICE’s arguments unpersuasive, citing ICE’s own contracting records.
“ICE statement of work directs that flights are to be conducted with as few crew members as possible,” according to a February 2024 decision by a federal board that hears contracting disputes. Yet that decision left open the possibility that CSI Aviation should have done more to ensure the replacement flight crew had enough rest.
The case was ultimately settled months later with ICE agreeing to pay CSI Aviation $32 million for the flight involving the 92 Somali immigrants and other work for which CSI claimed it was not fully compensated by the government.
The matter of the failed flight to Somalia is not the only instance where a CSI-contracted ICE flight has raised serious concerns. Also in 2017, a plane operated by a CSI subcontractor filled with smoke and fumes, leading to both detainees and contract security guards “having difficulty breathing and beginning to panic,” according to a record obtained by Capital & Main. There were 129 detained immigrants on the plane.
“Absurdly High” Bid for an ICE Contract
(Illustration: Ren Velez / POGO)
That CSI contracting dispute with ICE was resolved around the time the agency awarded CSI a five-year contract worth up to $3.6 billion in March 2024.
That long-term contract has drawn a legal challenge from a competing company called Classic Air Charter, alleging that ICE improperly evaluated the companies’ respective bids. Classic Air Charter alleged in court filings last month that ICE may end up paying CSI Aviation $500 million more than is necessary if the longer-term contract stays with CSI. “CSI’s price was absurdly high, exceeding the competition by upwards of a half billion dollars,” Classic Air Charter states in its complaint filed in federal court, which was first reported by Law360.
This legal challenge prompted ICE to pause the long-term contract and award the recent no-bid award to CSI Aviation, which the agency describes as an “interim contract.”
The agency has explained why it declined to compete this new contract. Due to the high priority and urgency the Trump administration has placed on immigration enforcement, including deportation, ICE wrote that it “is unable to compete an interim contract,” according to the agency’s notice posted last month. “ICE’s only solution is to award the interim contract to the incumbent, CSI.”
“Despite their company’s financial success during Democratic administrations, CSI Aviation CEO Allen Weh, his daughter, and his wife have been major campaign contributors to the current president.”
While CSI is poised to benefit from this administration’s priorities, it has won contract awards across numerous presidencies. CSI Aviation benefitted from the Obama administration’s 2011 shift to relying on private contractors for removal flights. During that year, ICE removed record high numbers of immigrants. CSI Aviation’s highest annual federal contract revenue to date came last year during the Biden administration, according to a government spending website.
Despite their company’s financial success during Democratic administrations, CSI Aviation CEO Allen Weh, his daughter, and his wife — who is also listed as a corporate director — have been major campaign contributors to the current president, collectively giving about $840,000 to Trump-aligned political action committees, according to Federal Election Commission data analyzed by POGO. The three did not respond to requests for comment.
The possibility that their involvement in politics could impact their bottom-line has not gone unnoticed in the past. As journalist Jeffrey Kaye wrote in 2010, “Perhaps no one on the political scene has more of a stake in the deportation of illegal immigrants than Allen Weh.” Weh unsuccessfully ran in the Republican primary to be that party’s candidate for governor of New Mexico in 2010 and for the U.S. Senate in 2014. The Los Angeles Timesnoted in 2014 that his company was one of many “at the intersection of the highly charged politics of immigration and the economic realities of government contracting.” More than a decade later, that remains the case.
