ICE Air Hits Record 1,794 Enforcement Flights in March 2026 — 122% Surge, First Removals to Moldova, Myanmar, Thailand

Human Rights First’s ICE Flight Monitor report for March 2026, published May 5, documents that U.S. immigration enforcement flights reached a record high of 1,794 in a single month — a 122% increase over March 2025. The March total includes 225 removal flights to 46 countries (a 23% increase from February’s 183 flights), 1,225 domestic shuffle flights shuffling detainees between facilities away from legal counsel and family, and the expansion of third-country forced transfers to Moldova and Uganda as first-time destinations, alongside continued flights to Eswatini, Poland, and Uzbekistan. First-time removal flights to Moldova, Myanmar, and Thailand mark the administration’s most geographically expansive month of deportations. The flight data, developed from six years of independent tracking by Tom Cartwright and transitioned to Human Rights First in August 2025, reveals that even a partial government shutdown in early 2026 did not slow the enforcement machinery.

The 1,794-flight figure establishes that ICE Air Operations has effectively doubled in scale during the first year of the second Trump administration. The 1,225 domestic shuffle flights — flights that move detainees between facilities, not toward removal — are structurally significant: they are the primary mechanism by which the administration separates detainees from attorneys and family members who might assist with legal challenges. This connects to the pattern of voluntary departure coercion documented in the Washington Post’s May 8 reporting (see 2026-05-08–washington-post-voluntary-departure-orders-80000-detention-coercion) and to the Court-upheld third-country deportation program (see 2025-06-23–scotus-enables-third-country-deportations-dvd). The record flight count also contextualizes Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons’s May 5 admission that he “didn’t know some of the countries existed” that ICE was deporting people to (see 2026-05-05–ice-director-lyons-admits-didnt-know-deportation-countries-existed-third-country-program).