00:00More than 30 migrants, detainees, handcuffed, walk up those steps and get on board.
00:08One, two, three, four more detainees.
00:12You can tell that their hands are restrained.
00:15This is one of about 6,000 ICE flights since President Donald Trump took office.
00:20We were able to find this plane here in Richmond, Virginia,
00:22but most of them are hidden from the public and operating with little transparency.
00:27Virtually every ICE flight carrying detainees blocks their tail numbers from flight tracking websites,
00:33making it nearly impossible for families and advocates to find their loved ones once they're in ICE custody.
00:41This is one of the tail numbers that we think could possibly come here.
00:47And right now it's in Youngstown.
00:49Oh, look, I think it's taken off because the altitude is increasing.
00:53Yeah.
00:53We studied months of flight paths, got a tail number and made an educated guess about which flight would arrive in Richmond.
01:00Then using a crowdsourced database that monitors aircraft radio signals,
01:05we tracked the suspected flight, revealing every city and state it stopped in within 24 hours.
01:11This is the plane we're tracking, a Boeing 737, operated by Eastern Air Express with the tail number N668CP.
01:19It has up to 148 economy seats, a bathroom in the front and the back,
01:24but it's unclear how many people are on board this flight or any other ICE flight.
01:29Tyson 5-1, continue on.
01:31OK, Tyson 51 is this one right now.
01:34That's a call sign that they're using for this flight.
01:37Many ICE flights go by Tyson,
01:39the same call sign used to identify Trump's personal plane after he was elected in 2016.
01:45Here's the flight path it took on August 6th, Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, to Louisiana,
01:52back to Ohio, then New York, picking up and dropping off detainees at every stop.
01:57If it's actually coming to Virginia, it should be here very soon.
02:04It's on approach.
02:05It's on approach right now.
02:07It's altitude is like literally 50 feet.
02:11OK, I think over there, over there.
02:13Go, go, go.
02:14All right, I think, I think that might be it.
02:17This is a plane.
02:18This is a plane that we've been tracking all morning.
02:22This is it.
02:23And we just saw like more than 30 detainees handcuffed walk up those steps and get on board.
02:31There's one, two, three, four more detainees.
02:36You can tell that their hands are restrained.
02:38Another, another one, another.
02:41OK, so they're unloading another vehicle here.
02:43Multiple detainees walking up to get on board this Eastern Air Express flight.
02:49The Trump administration has used more than 70 airports across the country
02:54for domestic shuffle flights so far,
02:56moving ICE detainees between detention centers before deportation.
03:01In the past three months, the number of these flights spiked 90 percent
03:05compared to the same time period last year, according to an immigrant rights group.
03:10And that trend is expected to continue after the Department of Homeland Security
03:14recently airmarked $14.4 billion for ICE flights.
03:18We know that the tail number of the flight that we've been tracking today is N668CP.
03:27And we want to see if this public tracking site that gets its data and information from the FAA
03:32has any record of the flight.
03:35Nothing comes up.
03:36But we were able to track the flight as it made its way back to Alexandria, Louisiana,
03:41the busiest hub for ICE deportation flights.
03:45At this point in the journey, some of the first detainees on board were possibly on this plane,
03:50handcuffed for nearly 10 hours.
03:52As this ICE flight completes its 24-hour trip,
03:56Louisiana is likely the last stop in the U.S. before the people on board are deported.
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