Deportation flights at WA airport up dramatically this year, advocates say

More migrants were flown out of King County’s Boeing Field during the first six months of this year than all of last year as the Trump administration has moved to drastically ramp up deportations.

That’s according to activists who hosted a press conference Tuesday outside the county-owned airport in south Seattle, where they also complained of increased obstacles from the county that hinder their efforts to observe and document the flights.

Through June 30, the advocates witnessed 42 immigration flights arrive in Washington this year, said Stan Shikuma, of the Japanese-American organization Tsuru for Solidarity. Three of those flights went to Yakima, not Boeing Field. Advocates couldn’t observe two of the Boeing Field flights, one because U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement made it harder to track its flights and another because it arrived close to midnight.

All of last year, 52 so-called “ICE Air” flights came into Washington. Those planes picked up at least 1,222 people transferred from the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma before likely deportation, according to the advocacy group La Resistencia, which has called for the detention center’s closure. That doesn’t include a few flights volunteers couldn’t observe, and others they may not know about entirely.

https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2025/07/15/deportation-flights-at-wa-airport-up-dramatically-this-year-advocates-say/