ICE was escorting a man who had agreed to leave the U.S. onto a commercial flight from Seattle to New York so he could connect to India. The officers bypassed the boarding gate process, and walked him onto the Alaska Airlines flight at the next gate that was going to Sitka, Alaska, instead.
Flight attendants told them it was the wrong plane. They ordered crew to board him anyway, even though he reportedly wasn’t on the manifest. Then ICE re-detained the man when Alaska Airlines brought him back to Seattle – instead of letting him continue home to India.
This happened on May 31, 2025, but is just now coming to light. And I can’t even. I have literally lost my ability to even.
The passenger was Rakesh Rakesh, now 25, who had been held for months at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma. He had initially pursued asylum but finally gave up, and voluntarily agreed to return to India at his own expense to avoid a deportation order on his record. This request was granted by an immigration judge.
- Since this was voluntary departure, he was supposed to travel like a normal passenger with no onboard escort, no handcuffs, and no shackles. ICE officers were just supposed to walk him onto the aircraft.
- But officers did not take him through the normal gate. They used airfield access, brought him up a stairway from the ramp and onto the jetbridge at the entrance to the aircraft. Gate agents weren’t notified.
- And they went up onto the wrong jetbridge. ICE should have checked in with an airline agent. That would have let them know it was the wrong flight. Flight attendants did let them know. Inexplicably, they did not care.
Once the flight was airborne, flight attendants alerted the captain. The captain then told Rakesh what had happened. He was scared because he’d been told he was only allowed to go back to India. The captain took him to the crew hotel, got him a room, and organized the flight back to Seattle the next morning and onto New York.
But when Rakesh arrived in Seattle, ICE refused to allow him to continue on the rebooked itinerary to New York and India. They took him back into custody, to the Tacoma detention center. He went on a hunger strike for a few days after returning to detention.
- The captain kept in touch with him and visited him at the detention center.
- An immigration attorney overhead the captain explaining the story, and took the case pro bono because it was so insane.
- Rakesh was finally allowed to leave the country after 16 additional days in detention.
Seattle Airport Atrium
The man was voluntarily leaving. ICE never had to hunt him down, convince him, subdue him, or fly him on a charter. He had given up his asylum claim, had court permission to depart, and had paid for his own flights.
ICE didn’t just put him on the wrong flight. They did it because they bypassed procedure. They knew they’d done it. And they allowed him to be unescorted in Sitka, Alaska. He returned voluntarily to leave the country, and then ICE would not let him go.
(HT: Paddle Your Own Kanoo)
This is what Republicans are all about–hate
Ice was wrong! The rest is lib ! He should of been allowed to to go onto India!
Kudos to the captain for having some empathy and for continuing to provide support after hearing about it
@Trkq – Yet I am willing to bet that you didn’t raise a single objection when Obama used ICE to deport 3.1 million people over his eight years in office.
ICE should be defunded. Kudos to the Alaska captain and the immigration lawyer.
How many thousands of others have been deported illegally?
If Obama’s deportation was reportedly 3.1 million, why were so many Republicans complaining about our lack of deportation?
Kafka was an optimist.
Anyway, wrong argument Mike. We’re talking about now, not then. Obama’s program was probably too fast (and there are a lot of other things he did that I don’t like) but none of that involved an army of masked thugs, a gulag of concentration camps or putting children in cages. What is going on now is pure sadism by poorly trained people with much power and too little oversight.
The cruelty is the point.
Gee, and I wonder why Democrats want some reasonable controls placed on these idiots? No other arm of law enforcement could get away with the malfense that ICE does.
@ Mike Hunt– you are a hate-monger.
Wait, ICE is supposed to think and intimidate? Next they will be asked to walk and chew gum at the same time. Luckily Trump was napping again when this was reported.
@Corinne Hollings — Because the Republicans don’t care if their message is actually true. Democrats do, Republicans make big noises about claiming to do. It’s about tough-guy deportations, not about removing people from the country.
And this sort of thing tends to happen when you don’t care about people’s rights. Deny rights for any group, you can deny them for anyone by simply declaring them to be part of that group.
@Mike Hunt — We aren’t saying all deportations are wrong. We are saying the Gestapo is going about it in a very bad way. They’ve long had a reputation for improper behavior but Republican pressure kept the Democrats from doing anything about the abuses. (For example, deporting to Mexico by shoving them across the border–never mind if they came from Mexico. And never mind the gangs kidnapping them for ransom.)
I kinda like this idea. No more complaints about deportation to your gang infested country of origin or Africa.
Just put them on airplanes to Alaska and maybe Puerto Rico while their mostly bogus cases work their way .through thr system. Eventually they self deport and problem solved
Also good for Alaska Air solvency!
@drrichard @StarlessbBB @Loren — The rhetoric in this comment thread is exactly the problem. Throwing around words like “Gestapo,” “gulag,” “thugs,” and “concentration camps” might feel emotionally satisfying, but it also explains why ICE agents are now wearing masks. Because it turns out that when you relentlessly portray line officers as monsters, some unstable people take that as a green light to threaten or target them and their families. That didn’t materialize out of nowhere. It is the downstream effect of highly sensationalized news coverage that strips away any distinction between enforcing immigration law and committing atrocities.
On the subject of “kids in cages,” please know this. Minors were held in the same exact kinds of facilities and conditions during the Obama years. It’s just that CNN and MSNBC weren’t relentlessly reporting on it at the time. And for the sake of objectivity, it is also true that Trump now allows ICE to operate in schools, hospitals, churches, and courthouses whereas Obama others before him did not. It is perfectly reasonable to have a discussion as to whether or not this should be the policy.
While we are on the subject of the mainstream news media, the same news outlets that barely scrutinized enforcement practices a decade ago now selectively amplify the most inflammatory anecdotes to create a narrative of systemic sadism, because outrage drives engagement. I’m not saying mistakes don’t happen or that accountability isn’t necessary. (Not AT ALL.) But the conversation has been completely hijacked by framing designed to provoke rather than to inform. If you actually care about civil liberties, you should also care about accuracy and proportionality. Otherwise, you’re just feeding the cycle that escalates tensions on both sides.
THAT IS YOUR FILTHY GOVEERNMENT AT WORK.