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 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 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.”
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 dressed as Trump. His website 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. “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 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, chartered flight costs have 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 inconsistencies 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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