The Connecticut Attorney General has sent his second warning in a month to the airlines of the low -cost carrier, says the startup that has endangered tax exemptions and other local support by accepting deportation flights for the application of immigration and customs of the United States.
Meanwhile, the Democrats in the Connecticut legislature are working to expand the Sanctuary of the State to penalize companies such as Avelo for working with federal immigration authorities.
The reaction occurs after AVElo based in Texas signed an agreement earlier this month to dedicate three of its 20 planes to carry out deportation flights as part of the charter network known as Ice Air. It also follows a propublic report, which Connecticut Attorney General William Tong cited in the letter of April 8 to Avelo, revealing the restlessness of the flight attendees on the treatment and security of Detinsee in these flights. The concerns raised by the airline employees included how difficult it could be evacuated to people who use wist and ankle shackles.
“Can Avelo confirm that it will never operate flights, while non -violent passengers are in shackles, wives, waist chains and/or leg plates?” The letter of April 8 of Tong asks. “Can Avelo confirm that a flight will never operate without a safe and timely evacuation strategy for all passengers?”
Tong then issued a public statement on April 15 reiterating his groups.
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Obeyed by propublic
In an email of April 3, AVELO employees obtained by Propublic and other publications, the Andrew Levy CEO called the deportation contract “too valuable not to follow” at a time when the startup was losing Monery and the confidence of consumption was to take Tipwers. Avelo would close one of his bases, in Sonoma, California County, and move certain flight routes to the days of peak extraction as the resources changed to the ice air. Deportation flights would be based on a table, Arizona, and start in May.
Avelo has an important center in New Haven, Connecticut, and recently expanded to Bradley International Airport, near Hartford. In 2023, the airline won a two -year fuel tax moratorium on state legislators after a large lobbying.
The last Thursday, the American senator Richard Blumenthal was one of the almost 300 attendees in a rally out of New Haven airport. “Avelo has to change his course,” he said. “For the president of Avelo: you really put yourself in him.”
The public members are also raising objections. An online petition that asks for a bird’s boycott unless you drop your new ice contract has collected almost 35,000 signatures since April 6. And the protests are spreading from Connecticut to cities that the airline serves throughout the country, including Eugon, Oegon; Rochester, New York; Burban, California; and Wilmington, Delaware.
Tong’s letter to Avelo demanded that the airline produce a copy of its ice air contract. The attorney general also asked if Avelo would deport people challenging the judicial orders, pointing to the flights of March to El Salvador carried out by another Charter airline, Globalx, after a federal judge ordered that the planes be retreced. Neinder Ice or Globalx responded to applications for propublicic comments.
Levy answer tongue with a letter of a page. In him, Levy suggested that if Connecticut wanted more information about Air Ice’s contract, he should submit a request for public records. (Federal statistics show that such ice requests generally take months or years to be answered).
If the attorney general wanted to know more about the use of shackles on deportation flights, Levy continued, he should ask the Department of National Security. If the language knows more about evacuation requirements, you must address questions to the Federal Aviation Administration. On the part of Avelo, Levy assured Tong, the airline “is still committed to public safety and the rule of law.”
“Regardless of the administration or affiliation to the party,” said a spokesman from Avelo to Propublica in a statement sent by email: “When our country calls our practice, that is, we continue all the protocols of DHS and FAA.”
A bill sponsored by the Democrats to expand the Connecticut Sanctuary Law has now eliminated its Judicial Committee of the House of Representatives in a line vote of the 22-12 party, about the strong objections of the Republicans, and awaits a full on the floor. If it happens, any company, including airlines, proposing to do business with the State, must not be “cooperation or hire any federal immigration authority for the purposes of the detention, retention or transport of an individual.”
Meanwhile, Avello’s fuel tax moratorium expires on June 30. Until now, no legislation has introduced to extend it, and activists urge Connecticut legislators to let taxes break that.