type: timeline_event
On March 17, 2026, reporting by NHPR and WBUR confirmed that two charter flights operated by Journey Aviation had departed from Phoenix, stopped at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and refueled at Shannon Airport in Ireland before landing in Rzeszow, Poland — the closest major airport to the Ukrainian border. The flights carried approximately 15 Ukrainian nationals who were transported to the Poland-Ukraine border and effectively returned to an active war zone where Russian forces continued to conduct military operations.
The flights were traced through a combination of flight tracking data and sources at Portsmouth's Pease International Tradeport, where the aircraft were observed taking on fuel and supplies consistent with a transatlantic crossing. Journey Aviation, the charter operator, was owned by a documented Trump campaign donor, adding a layer of political entanglement to the deportation operation. The company had not previously been identified as an ICE deportation contractor.
Human Rights First condemned the deportations as a violation of the United States' obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention and the Convention Against Torture, both of which prohibit returning individuals to countries where they face a well-founded fear of persecution or armed conflict. The organization noted that the United States had granted Temporary Protected Status to Ukrainian nationals specifically because of the ongoing war, making the deportation of Ukrainians to the border region a direct contradiction of the government's own country-conditions assessment.
The Rzeszow flights were not isolated incidents. Investigative reporting revealed that at least eight similar charter flights had carried deportees to destinations in Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia since January 2026, suggesting a systematic program of removals to conflict-affected regions. The Irish government announced it would review whether allowing the flights to refuel at Shannon was consistent with Ireland's neutrality obligations, reviving a controversy that had surrounded the airport's use by U.S. military and intelligence flights during the Iraq War era.