Post

NEW: Meet the private-equity firm -- and its billionaire immigrant CEO -- making millions off some of ICE's cruelest deportation flights. After a five-month investigation, my story for @motherjones.com: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

For years, Omni Air International has been ICE's only large-jet charter for Africa and Asia deportations -- usually a handful of trips a year. Last April, Omni's parent company was purchase by Stonepeak, and since then, ICE trips have skyrocketed.

These Omni ICE trips include the removal of dozens migrants to Ghana, a country they have never been to, and the transfer deportation of legal asylum seekers back to Russia and Iran, via Omni flights to Egypt, Qatar and Kuwait. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Stonepeak's website is peak capitalist verbal bollockry - "macro tailwinds" anyone ??

Yeah, and they’ve also decided that data centers count as infrastructure and are heavily invested. Goes against their whole risk-averse philosophy and could blow up in their faces.

It makes its own perverse sense, though. If you lack so much conscience that you find it okay to: 1. deport someone to a country that is not their origin one but where they might be tortured, OR 2. deport someone back to their origin country where they *will* be tortured for sure…

I spoke with a forensic pathologist on the risks of shackling for long periods -- excruciating pain, bruising, cuts, permanent nerve damage, and a "very high risk" of developing blood clots that could become deadly. She described these flights as torture. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Dozens of migrants on Omni ICE flights may have been shackled for more than 73 hours in October and more than 80 hours in December, leaving some elderly deportees too weak to walk. Flight data backs this up. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

This is Stonepeak's CEO, Michael Dorrell. Australian immigrant billionaire. He keeps a pretty low profile but he sure loves real estate.