New England Patriots Team Plane Makes Trip To Guantnamo Bay

Flight records Monday indicated that a New England Patriots team plane made a trip to and from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the infamous U.S. military base that’s now being used as a detention center for deportees and some other immigrants the Trump administration shuttled out of the country and to a notorious Salvadoran prison.

Two planes owned by the team are available for charter, and Patriots owner Robert Kraft has also used them for personal projects like aid missions. But it’s not clear what led to the Guantánamo Bay trip. A spokesperson for Kraft’s company told HuffPost that “there were no detainees on the plane,” but that the Patriots current charter operator does work with the Department of Defense to transport military personnel and others for “no financial gain.”

The Trump administration has used Guantánamo Bay to detain deportees from the United States, and also as a waypoint for some of the immigrants sent — without due process, criminal charges or other legal protections — to the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, a brutal Salvadoran mega-prison.

Charter flights are a key part of the administration’s “mass deportation” apparatus, and ProPublica recently reported on flight attendants for the charter company Global Crossing Airlines, used to “rock bands, sports teams and sun-seekers,” who’ve found themselves instead working deportation flights. Charter flights have been used for immigration enforcement by previous administrations as well.



https://www.huffpost.com/entry/patriots-plane-guantanamo-bay-charter-kraft_n_68112188e4b0d4c3d8e31c28