Airport security video shows another way federal agents are taking immigrants to detention centers. In some cases they’re using commercial flights, with escorts dressed like any other passengers to avoid drawing attention.
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Video shows Adrian Conejo Arias and his 5-year-old son Liam being escorted onto a Delta flight from Minneapolis to Texas after they were detained by immigration agents in January.This image from video surveillance provided by MSP Airport Police Department shows Liam Conejo Ramos and Adrian Conejo Arias at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on Jan. 21, 2026. This image from video surveillance provided by MSP Airport Police Department shows Liam Conejo Ramos and Adrian Conejo Arias at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on Jan. 21, 2026. This photo provided by Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, shows Adrian Conejo Arias and his son, Liam Conejo Ramos, in San Antonio, Texas, on Jan. 31, 2026, after being released from Dilley detention center. This photo provided by Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, shows Adrian Conejo Arias and his son, Liam Conejo Ramos, in San Antonio, Texas, on Jan. 31, 2026, after being released from Dilley detention center. MINNEAPOLIS — Airport security video shows another way federal agents are taking immigrants to detention centers — in some cases they’re using commercial flights, with escorts dressed like any other passenger. Video obtained through a public records request shows the 5-year-old boy, who became a face of the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis when he was detained while wearing a bunny hat, being flown with his father to Texas on a Delta Air Lines flight, just a day after they were Adrian Conejo Arias and his son Liam Conejo Ramos seemed calm in these recordings as they were being escorted through the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport by a man and two women dressed in plain clothes. Since the father and boy didn’t appear to be in custody, their trip to San Antonio likely went unnoticed by fellow passengers.The video of Liam and his father, they say, exposes another route that’s harder for them to document, despite happening in plain view inside the same airport terminals where Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents wearing tactical, military-style gear are nowThe father, who was seeking asylum from Ecuador, and son were detained by ICE officers in Minnesota on Jan. 20 and taken to Texas. They were released on aThe video that revealed their commercial airline travel was first obtained by Nick Benson, an aviation enthusiast and activist with MN 50501, a grassroots group involved in anti-ICE and No Kings protests. Benson said he’s never seen children while monitoring ICE charter flights, so he suspected ICE was flying them commercially. He identified the time and day the father and son were flown out of Minneapolis, filed a public records request for the security video — and there they were. The Associated Press obtained the same video through a similar request to the MSP Airport Police Department. It shows Liam’s dad carrying the boy’s Spider-Man backpack as a woman shows an airline agent their boarding passes. A man and the other woman follow them onto the jetway. Delta declined to comment on the video. But the airline said most government travel is booked through third-party agencies, with no advance notice about who is flying or why. The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately return messages seeking comment.mostly using flights chartered through airline broker CSI Aviation, which has subcontracted with small airlines such as GlobalX, Eastern Air Express, Bighorn Airways, Key Lime Air and Avelo Airlines. ICE Air continues to rapidly expand both domestic transfer and deportation flights, according to Human Rights First, which documented 1,630 immigration enforcement flights in February alone — an average of 42 per day, up from 39 in January. Of that total, 183 were deportation flights and 1,170 were domestic transfer flights. ICE also uses U.S. Coast Guard planes. Flight Monitor said it tracked hundreds of flights since June 2025 in which Coast Guard planes were used to transport immigrants domestically. “It seems that ICE sometimes uses commercial flights to destinations where they don’t carry out kind of larger scale ICE Air deportation flights,” said Savi Arvey, director of research and analysis for refugee and immigrant rights at Human Rights First. The monitors use flight-tracking websites to follow the charter planes, but these tools can’t track individual passengers on commercial flights, making them “less in the public eye,” Arvey said. “It adds another level of opaqueness.”Bellisle is an investigative reporter based in Washington state. She covers a variety of topics, including police accountability, immigration, and federal workers.
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