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U.S. SECRETLY DEPORTING PALESTINIANS TO WEST BANK IN COORDINATION
WITH ISRAEL  
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Ghousoon Bisharat, Ben Reiff
February 5, 2026
+972 Magazine
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_ Palestinians arrested by ICE are being flown, bound and shackled,
on private jet belonging to Israeli-American tycoon close to Trump,
investigation reveals. _

Mohammed Kanaan (wearing keffiyeh) selfie with deported Palestinian
men released at a checkpoint near the town of Ni’lin, Maher Awad,
24, Michigan (foreground), and Sameer Zeidan, 47, from Louisiana,
(background, 1/21/2026, (Courtesy

 

The United States is quietly deporting Palestinians arrested by
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to the occupied West Bank by
private jet, with two such flights taking place in coordination with
the Israeli authorities since the beginning of this year — part of a
secretive and politically sensitive operation revealed through a joint
investigation by +972 Magazine and The Guardian. 

Eight Palestinian men — shackled for the entire journey by their
wrists and ankles — were flown from an ICE deportation hub in
Phoenix, Arizona on Jan. 20 and arrived in Tel Aviv the following
morning after refueling stops in New Jersey, Ireland, and Bulgaria.
After arriving at Ben Gurion Airport, the men were put in a vehicle
with an armed Israeli police officer and released at a military
checkpoint outside the Palestinian town of Ni’lin in the West Bank.

The same private jet, which belongs to an Israeli-American property
tycoon who is a friend and long-time business associate of President
Donald Trump, conducted an almost identical journey on Monday this
week, but the number of passengers onboard and most of their
identities remain unclear.

According to people familiar with the details, the eight men deported
on the initial flight, which was first reported
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by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, are residents of West Bank towns and
cities including Bethlehem, Hebron, Silwad, Ramun, Bir Nabala, and
Al-Ram. Some of them have held green cards, and several have wives,
children, and other close family members in the United States. Some
had been detained in ICE facilities for weeks; at least one was held
for over a year.

The first person to notice them upon their release at the Ni’lin
checkpoint on Jan. 21 was Mohammed Kanaan, a university professor who
lives near the crossing.

“At around 11 a.m., I saw a group of men walking toward my house
wearing light gray pajamas, like the ones worn by [Palestinian]
prisoners
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in Israeli prisons,” he told +972 and The Guardian. (These
tracksuits came from ICE.) “I was shocked to see them. The Israeli
army does not usually release prisoners at this checkpoint.”

A Palestinian worker waits outside Ni’lin checkpoint, as the Israeli
settlement of Hashmonaim can be seen in the background, occupied West
Bank, October 21, 2013. (Keren Manor/Activestills)

Kanaan said the men were cold when they arrived at his house. “They
were not wearing jackets or coats, and the weather was very cold and
windy that day,” he recounted. “They stayed at my place for two
hours, during which I fed them and they called their families who
either came to pick them up or arranged transportation for them.”

According to Kanaan, it had been so long since the men had been in
contact with their families — due to their prolonged detention in
ICE facilities — that some of them were considered missing. “Their
families were so happy to hear their voices,” he said. “One mother
started screaming and crying over the phone.”

A resident of Ramun confirmed that two men originally from the West
Bank town were on the first deportation flight. He added that at least
four more young men from the town who were living in the United States
are currently being held by the U.S. authorities, with fears growing
that they may be deported as well.

Several immigration attorneys expressed shock and concern about the
flights, noting that deportations of Palestinians via Israel have been
exceedingly rare in the past and that facilitating deportations in
occupied territory may constitute a violation of international law. 

“Aside from the many irregularities with the deportation of eight
Palestinians on a private jet and no due process, this transfer also
violates the principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits the
forcible return of individuals to a country where there are
substantial grounds for believing that the person would be at risk of
irreparable harm upon return, including persecution, torture, ill
treatment or other serious human rights violations,” Gissou Nia,
director of the Strategic Litigation Project at the Atlantic Council,
explained.

“The United States is bound by international treaties that
explicitly prohibit this, including the Convention against Torture,”
she continued. “Therefore, the U.S. violated this principle in
sending Palestinian asylum seekers and Palestinians with other
statuses back on a flight to Israel, where they face persecution.

Israeli Border Police officers violently arrest a Palestinian
protester near the Beit El checkpoint, north of Ramallah, occupied
West Bank, December 22, 2017. (Oren Ziv)

“The Israeli state’s role in transferring these individuals from
Ben Gurion Airport to the West Bank also implicates them in this
violation,” Nia added. “Additionally, if Ireland and Bulgaria had
knowledge that the private jet was carrying these individuals, the
refueling stop also raises questions as to the intermediary
responsibility of those countries.”  

Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard described the flights as
“an exceptional case — I don’t know of any cases where
Palestinians were able to reach the West Bank through Ben Gurion
Airport, not even humanitarian cases, with the exception of VIPs.”
As such, he said, he thinks “some kind of specific interest made
this possible.”

According to Haaretz, the deportations followed “an unusual request
from Washington to Israel,” and were approved by Israel’s Shin Bet
security service.

‘EVERYTHING I KNEW WAS IN THE U.S.’

Maher Awad, 24, was one of the eight men on the first deportation
flight. “My life was beautiful,” he told +972 Magazine and The
Guardian from his family’s home in Ramun, near Ramallah, in
American-accented English. “I was feeling safe and secure in the
United States until ICE arrested me.”

He said he moved almost a decade ago from the West Bank to Kalamazoo,
Michigan, where his uncle was already living. He finished high school
there before starting to work at his family’s popular shawarma shop,
among other family businesses. He did not have a green card, but said
he had obtained a social security number while applying for one. He
also paid taxes and acquired a driver’s license.

He met his partner, 26-year-old Sandra McMyler, a few years ago, and
they had planned to get married. “Everything I knew, everything I
experienced was in the United States,” he said.

 

A Palestinian man steps off the private jet that deported him and
seven other Palestinian men from the United States to Israel, January
21, 2026. (Source unknown)

A Palestinian man steps off the private jet that deported him and
seven other Palestinian men from the United States to Israel, January
21, 2026. (Source unknown)

In February 2025, Awad called the police to report a break-in. But
when they arrived, they arrested him — apparently in connection to a
domestic violence charge from 2024, which both he and McMyler, whom it
involved, said had been dropped. He was detained for two days in the
local jail; when he walked out, he was picked up by ICE. (The criminal
charge was later dismissed.)

For almost a year, he was moved between different detention centers
before being put on the flight to Israel. ICE agents, he said,
confiscated his Palestinian passport and his phone, and did not return
them. When he was stopped at an Israeli military checkpoint recently,
all he had to show them was a Michigan driver’s license.

Upon learning that the U.S. authorities planned to deport him back to
the West Bank, he said he expressed strong objections to ICE agents
and a judge. “But they just forced me to go,” he explained.
“It’s scary; I really don’t want to be here. I’d rather be in
a different country than my country right now, because of everything
that’s going on
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Shortly before Awad was detained, McMyler — who already had two
children of her own — became pregnant with his son, who was born
four months ago. Awad has not yet met him. “It just ate me up every
single day,” he said of missing the birth. “Every time I go to
sleep, I look at his photos and I just cry.”

In addition to his partner and son, Awad’s brother, sister, and
uncle remain in the United States, all of whom he said have legal
status.

“He just wants his son, he wants his family,” McMyler told +972
and The Guardian from Michigan. “He wants to be able to help me take
care of his baby. He wants to hold him, kiss him, talk to him.

“My other kids miss him,” she added, describing how she has
struggled without Awad for the past year. “I want my family back
together.”

Maher Awad and Sandra McMyler. (Courtesy)

Sameer Zeidan, a 47-year-old grocery worker originally from the town
of Bir Nabala, also near Ramallah, was on the same deportation flight
as Awad. His uncle, Khaled, told +972 and The Guardian that Zeidan had
lived in Louisiana for over two decades with his wife, who is also a
Palestinian from the West Bank and a U.S. citizen. They had five
children together, who all have U.S. passports.

According to his uncle, Zeidan had a green card but allowed it to
expire without renewing it. His parents and three of his siblings also
live in the United States.

Khaled said Zeidan, who served prison time around a decade ago, was in
ICE detention for about a year and a half, during which time he was
transferred between several facilities. He was notified about the
deportation flight two months in advance. Like Awad, he said, ICE
agents confiscated Zeidan’s ID and Palestinian passport and never
returned them.

Zeidan told his uncle that he was shackled by his hands and wrists
“from the minute he left the [ICE] prison until he got out of the
car at the checkpoint near Ni’lin.” During the flight, his uncle
said, he ate by “moving his face toward the plate”; when he needed
to use the bathroom, they allowed him to remove one wrist and one
ankle from the shackles.

According to his uncle, Zeidan was made to sign documents authorizing
his deportation, which he regrets doing. “He told me that if he had
not signed these papers, he would’ve been able somehow to renew his
green card,” Khaled said. “Now he cannot go back to the [United]
States. His whole family is there.” 

‘OPAQUE SYSTEM WITHOUT ACCOUNTABILITY’

The tail of the private jet used for the two recent deportation
flights bears the emblem of Dezer Development, a property company
established by Israeli-American developer Michael Dezer, and today run
by his son, Gil Dezer.

The Dezers have been business partners of Donald Trump since the early
2000s. They have built six Trump-branded residential towers in Miami,
Florida and filings show they have jointly donated more than $1.3
million to his presidential campaigns.

Gil Dezer’s extravagant 50th birthday party last year featured
performers [[link removed]]
dressed as Trump. His website [[link removed]]
notes he is a member of the Florida Friends of the Israel Defense
Forces, a U.S. nonprofit that fundraises for the Israeli military.

Dezer spoke of his “love” for the president in a recent interview
[[link removed]]. “I’ve known
him now for 20 something years. I was at his wedding. He was at my
wedding. We’re good friends. Very proud that he’s in the office.
Very proud of the job he’s doing.”

Trump Towers by Dezer Development in Sunny Isles, Florida, March 25,
2012. (Edward Dulmulder/CC BY 2.0)

The flights come as the Trump administration has ramped up efforts to
deport large numbers of the more than 10 million undocumented
immigrants living in the United States. To this end, ICE chartered
Dezer’s aircraft — which he has previously described
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as “my favorite toy” — through Journey Aviation, a Florida-based
company frequently contracted by federal agencies to provide access to
a fleet of private jets. (Journey declined to comment on the
deportation flights to Israel.)

According to Human Rights First (HRF), which tracks deportation
flights, Dezer’s jet has made four other “removal flights” since
October — to Kenya, Liberia, Guinea, and Eswatini.

“This private charter jet has been repeatedly used for ICE Air
flights,” said Savi Arvey, HRF’s director of research and analysis
for refugee and immigrant rights. “It is part of an opaque system of
private aircraft facilitating this administration’s mass deportation
campaign, which has blatantly disregarded due process, separated
families, and operated without any accountability.”

In an email, Dezer stated that he was “never privy to the names”
of those who travel onboard his jet when it is privately chartered by
Journey, or the purpose of the flight. “The only thing I’m
notified about is the dates of use,” he said.

U.S. officials did not answer questions about the cost of the two
recent flights to Israel but according to ICE
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ranged from nearly $7,000 to over $26,000 per flight hour in the past.
Sources in the aviation industry estimate that the return flights to
Israel likely cost ICE between $400,000 and $500,000.

Because the United States does not recognize Palestine as a state,
there are vast inconsisten_cies in how border officials categorize
Palestinians’ countries of origin and removal. Palestinians arriving
in the United States have been variously identified as being from
Israel, Egypt, Jordan, or any other Arab countries they might have
transited through — most of which, and particularly Israel, have
generally refused to accept them. As a result, Palestinians often
languish in U.S. immigration detention centers longer than other
immigrants._

_In the past, when immigration authorities failed to find a country to
deport them to, Palestinians were released back into the United States
— often with ankle monitors and requirements for regular check-ins
with ICE. But as the Trump administration has sought to fulfil its
promise of mass deportations, several Palestinians have been removed
from the United States in recent months._

_Former DHS and State Department officials confirmed the United States
had been reluctant to deport Palestinians via Israel in the past, and
immigration lawyers expressed concerns about Israel’s involvement in
the deportations — fearing that their clients may find themselves
detained, interrogated, or abused by the same security forces they are
often fleeing._

_“[There’s] a willingness now to do what other administrations
have not been willing to do,” said Maria Kari, an attorney who has
represented Palestinians in ICE custody. “To send them back into —
arguably — harm’s way.”_

_A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department declined to comment
beyond saying that it “coordinates closely with the Department of
Homeland Security on efforts to repatriate illegal aliens.” _

_A DHS spokesperson also did not answer questions about the
deportation flights to Israel, but stated: “If a judge finds an
illegal alien has no right to be in this country, we are going to
remove them. Period.” _

_ICE did not respond to questions. Israel’s Foreign Ministry and
Prison Service declined to comment. _

_Harry Davies, Alice Speri, and Sufian Taha of The Guardian
contributed to this report, along with Alaa Salama._

_Ghousoon Bisharat is the editor-in-chief of +972 Magazine_

_Ben Reiff is Deputy Editor at +972 Magazine, based in London. He has
written for The Guardian, The Nation, New Statesman, Prospect, and
Haaretz, and spoken on Al Jazeera's Listening Post and Britain's LBC
radio. He is also a founding member of the editorial collective at
Vashti Media. Twitter: @bentreyf._

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