Faculty, students, and fans enjoy the beloved tradition known as March Madness, the NCAA basketball tournament (with famously epic upsets) that brings together Americans from all backgrounds to watch and pick winning college teams. But this season, working people took action to make sure March Madness remained about brackets, not broken families.
Too many colleges have flown athletes on the same airlines that ICE hires to deport our community members.
One college that didn't fly its athletes for March Madness on the same airlines that deport for ICE? None other than the University of Michigan, whose men's team won this year's NCAA men's basketball championship! True champions, with strong values on and off the court.
Focusing on March Madness was part of our De-ICE These Flights campaign, which we launched in fall 2025, to call on charter company CEOs to cut ties with ICE and stop profiting from cruelty and inhumanity.
We've witnessed our neighbors and loved ones, including children, be detained by masked federal immigration agents without due process, as part of a lawless terror campaign.
What happens next isn’t as visible: many are forced onto ICE deportation flights, shackled into their seats, and flown thousands of miles away—often in cruel, inhumane conditions.
Most of these deportation flights are operated by charter companies like GlobalX, Eastern Airlines, and Omni Air International—each making millions through contracts with ICE, profiting from inhumanity. In 2025, for example, GlobalX made over $246 million in total revenue. That same year the company flew over 1,700 deportation flights for ICE.
After the public protested one such charter, Avelo Airlines, with over 16,000 signatures demanding that it refuse to profit from the cruelty of this Administration’s deportation machine, Avelo Airlines in January 2026 ended its contract with the Department of Homeland Security.
No one should profit from cruelty and inhumanity.
But that's exactly what these airlines are doing every time they fly on behalf of ICE. It's time to De-ICE these flights! Demand the CEOs of these charters wash their hands of this profit. Show them we're watching. ADD YOUR NAME NOW.
