A federal lawsuit says two private airlines helped carry out deportation flights in defiance of a judge’s order, and taxpayers paid for them. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Inspector General and the Homeland Security Committees in Congress should open a full investigation into these companies’ work for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The suit, filed in July in federal court in Washington, D.C., names CSI Aviation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and GlobalX of Miami. It claims the companies flew 230 asylum seekers from Venezuela to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in March 2025. According to the suit, the migrants were misled about where they were going and were humiliated and tortured once inside. Their families were left to piece together their whereabouts from news coverage.

“There are allegations throughout the suit that both of these companies knew exactly what they were doing,” trial lawyer Ben Davis told KOB 4.

The lawsuit says CSI Aviation received more than $1.2 billion in ICE contracts in the first year of the current Trump administration, plus a new ICE Air contract worth up to $1.5 billion this year. Davis told KOB 4 that, based on the lawsuit, CSI founder and CEO Allen Weh and his family appear to have donated six figures, and the company appears to have received a no-bid contract worth over a billion dollars.

None of this has been proven in court. That’s exactly why an independent review matters. Whether someone supports tough immigration enforcement or not, every taxpayer deserves to know that public money isn’t paying contractors to ignore a federal judge.

Investigators should look at how these contracts were awarded and whether any court orders were broken.

Sign the petition to demand a full investigation before another billion-dollar contract goes out the door.