U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement recently added a second Utah airport to its network of detainee transportation flights.
From April through June, the ICE Flight Monitor documented 28 ICE flights passing through St. George Regional Airport. Human Rights First pulls from public aviation data. These are the first ICE flights through southwest Utah since the monitor began tracking in 2020.
Fifteen of these journeys began in Phoenix, Arizona, stopped in St. George and continued to Twin Falls, Idaho, which is also a new addition to ICE’s flight network. Another eight did the same route in reverse.
The flights correspond to an increase in ICE activity, said Jorge Pineda, co-founder of Manos Amigas Utah, a nonprofit that provides groceries and baby supplies to southern Utah families whose loved ones have been detained or deported. The group tracks bookings at the Washington County jail, which note when someone has an immigration hold.
ICE’s detention data shows many detainees held at the county jail don’t have criminal convictions. Since October, ICE has held an average of about 12 people in the jail on any given day. Seven of those, on average, are categorized as “no ICE threat level,” which means they have no criminal convictions. Two of the average 12 have the most serious threat level, with three more in the middle.
Flights began taking off from St. George shortly after a new sheriff took over at the Washington County Sheriff’s Office and the U.S. Senate swore in Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin.
“When we were tracking detainment, detentions under Kristi Noem, it was between one to three every day,” Pineda said. “After Markwayne Mullin was enacted, it's now three to eight every single day.”
Many of those arrested locally work in construction, he said.
From what he’s seen, Mexicans get deported much more quickly than other immigrants. He suspects ICE is waiting until it has enough people from the same country to merit a flight.
“We have constant reports of individual Guatemalans, Salvadorians, Hondurans, who are in prolonged detainment in sites spread all over the country,” he said.
More ICE activity, along with Manos Amigas becoming more well-known since it was founded last year, has contributed to more requests for support from their group, Pineda said. They now help 20 to 30 families per week.
The work is personal for Pineda, who said his father was deported last summer.
“The biggest, I guess, impact on me is knowing that I am able to do something,” he said.
Local activists, who declined to be on the record for this story, want to set up a flight monitoring system similar to what activist TJ Young does in Salt Lake City.
“There's just several boomers with some extra time on our hands that track flights,” Young said.
The ICE Flight Monitor logged 99 flights leaving Salt Lake City International Airport in 2025, and 65 so far this year through June. Since April, the two most common destinations have been Victorville, California, and Harlingen, Texas, which are near ICE detention facilities.
On recent Salt Lake flights, Young said, between 25 and 54 people have boarded, while very few have gotten off.
Young posts pictures online of the detainees boarding in shackles. Since they’re taken from afar, she doesn’t expect people to identify strangers. But it’s enough for people to recognize a loved one’s clothes, haircut or mannerisms. After the first post of about 40 people, 10 families reached out, Young said.
“Every time we've posted a flight, at least one person has reached out and said, ‘That's my dad. That's my uncle.’”
ICE’s online detainee locator isn’t immediately updated, so Young and her fellow observers want to help people track their loved ones. That allows families to put money on their loved ones’ commissary accounts so they can buy snacks. Detainees have reported inadequate food in detention facilities, though Homeland Security denies this.
Young said the flights don’t board in the most visible locations.
“They continue to try to position the airplanes in ways that we can't see,” she said. “But that just requires a better telephoto lens and a different place to stand.”
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.
