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The Trump administration chartered a private jet owned by an Israeli American businessman to deport eight Palestinians to the occupied West Bank this week, new reporting says.
The Palestinians were taken in a Gulfstream IV owned by a real estate partner of President Donald Trump, Haaretz reports, and handed over to Israeli Prison Service officials by U.S. law enforcement. Israeli officials then transported them to a checkpoint by an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank, where they were released.
The Israeli outlet says that footage shows one of the deported Palestinians exiting the plane with his hands in cuffs, with Israeli security personnel awaiting him at the bottom of the steps.
The case was described as “highly unusual,” and is estimated to have cost roughly $300,000, based on the market cost of chartering a private jet of about $15,000 per hour in flight. The plane reportedly took off from New York, and stopped twice for refueling, in Ireland and Bulgaria, before landing at Israel’s Ben-Gurion International Airport on Wednesday.
Sources told Haaretz that the deportation to the West Bank came at special request of U.S. officials to Israeli officials. One source said the request was honored after Israeli officials “determined that the deportees had no security background.”
U.S. officials claimed that the Palestinians were in the U.S. illegally, though Haaretz does not identify its sources, and the Trump administration has swept up countless legal residents in its immigration raids.
The Department of Homeland Security has targeted Palestinians and pro-Palestine activists in its sweeping crackdown on immigrants. It is currently in the process of trying to deport Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil to Algeria, and has previously tried to target other pro-Palestine advocates with visa revocations and other actions. Numerous pro-Israel groups have also aided in the administration’s campaign against pro-Palestine activists.
The identity of the jet owner is unclear. However, reports have previously found that the Trump administration has used an Israeli-owned jet to deport immigrants.
Zeteo reported in October that a Gulfstream IV jet owned by an Israeli American billionaire family with close ties to President Donald Trump appeared to have been used to fly 10 immigrants from Louisiana to Eswatini, a small country in southern Africa. The jet is owned by Michael Dezer and his family via a shell company, the outlet reported; the Dezers and their family firm, Dezer Development, have long-held ties to Trump, helping him develop the idea of Trump-branded properties in Florida in the 1990s.
Analysts aligned publicly available flight data of an aircraft taking off from Alexandria, Louisiana, where many Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers are located, and landing in Eswatini, along with reports of the country receiving deportees. At the time, the country’s government confirmed that it was receiving the deportees, and would hold them in detention until they could be taken to their countries of origin.
Human Rights Watch has found that the country has an agreement with the U.S. to take up to 160 people in exchange for $5.1 million.
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