Introduction: The Plane With No Destination
On a cloudy June morning, dozens of men shackled at the wrists, waist, and ankles shuffled toward a waiting aircraft. Guards offered no explanation of where they were going. Some thought they were being deported. Others clung to the hope that freedom might be waiting. Instead, they were herded into the cargo hold, where there were no seats, no toilets, and little food beyond a slice of bread, a piece of cheese, and a bottle of water.
Hours later, the plane touched down not in their countries of origin, but in Alaska — far from the detention centers of Washington state where many had been held, and even farther from the families and lawyers they had left behind.
One man, who kept a journal of the ordeal, later reflected: “From that moment on, I felt less than human.”
This story is not an aberration. It is a window into a growing global system of immigration transfers, where detainees are quietly moved like cargo, often without warning or explanation. For governments, the practice is a tool of logistics, population management, and control. For detainees, it is a cycle of fear, disorientation, and the erosion of dignity.
A Hidden Machinery
Immigration transfers are rarely visible to the public. Planes depart before dawn. Shackled passengers are hidden from cameras and the press. Records, when they exist at all, are vague or inaccessible.
The United States has seen a sharp increase in transfers in recent years. A Human Rights First report found that transfer flights in just the first eight months of one year jumped 43 percent compared to the same period the year before.
The official explanation is bureaucratic: detention facilities fill up, and people must be moved to where beds are available. In practice, however, the transfers are destabilizing. They sever detainees from lawyers, scatter families across states and borders, and undermine the fragile rights afforded to people in civil custody.
“You don’t just lose your bed,” explained one immigration attorney. “You lose your legal case, your community ties, your chance at freedom. Transfers erase people.”
Shackles in the Air
The details of transfer flights are hauntingly consistent across testimonies. Detainees are shackled at wrists, ankles, and waist, sometimes tethered together in chains. They are marched onto aircraft where guards enforce silence. Restrooms are restricted or forbidden. Food is minimal and often inedible.
“It feels like punishment,” said one man who had lived in the U.S. since childhood before being detained. “We’re not criminals. Our only ‘crime’ was crossing a border. But they treat us like dangerous convicts.”
The secrecy compounds the trauma. Most detainees say they are not told their destinations until hours into the flight — sometimes only upon landing. “It’s psychological warfare,” said another. “You can’t call your family, you can’t warn your lawyer. You are disappeared.”
Transfers as Retaliation
Lawyers and advocates argue that transfers are sometimes used strategically to retaliate against detainees who assert their rights.
One man in Florida won release on bond from an immigration judge — only to be transferred across the country days later, where a different court revoked his bond. Others say detainees who participate in hunger strikes or protests are quietly dispersed to distant facilities, effectively breaking up collective action.
“It’s a control tactic,” said a former U.S. immigration officer, speaking anonymously. “You scatter people, you weaken resistance, you make sure nobody gets too comfortable.”
The Alaska Episode
The men who landed in Alaska described conditions that violated even the meager standards set by immigration authorities. At the Anchorage Correctional Complex, they were crammed into overcrowded cells. Some slept on thin mattresses on the floor. Yard access was rare.
Worst of all, when one detainee asked for his belongings so he could call his family, guards responded with force. Witnesses say officers returned in riot gear and released pepper spray into the unit.
“You couldn’t breathe for days,” recalled one man. “The spray clung to the walls. Every cough felt like fire.”
Among those sprayed was a man with a chronic lung condition. According to the ACLU of Alaska, the exposure could easily have been fatal. The group condemned the incident as a “particularly egregious and excessive use of force” against civil detainees.
Civil Detention, Criminal Conditions
Immigration detention is legally classified as civil, not criminal. People are not supposed to be punished, but merely held while their cases are resolved. In theory, that means conditions should be less restrictive than prisons.
In reality, conditions often mirror — or exceed — the harshness of criminal incarceration. Transfers deepen the contradiction: people held for administrative reasons are shackled, chained, and shipped around the country or the world like convicted felons.
As the ACLU noted in its Alaska complaint, “The facility does not safely house even convicted criminals. Immigrant detainees — who are entitled to greater protections — are being subjected to treatment that violates both domestic and international law.”
A Global Pattern
While the U.S. system is vast, it is not unique. Immigration transfers and punitive detention practices are global phenomena.
- Australia has outsourced asylum processing to offshore detention sites on Nauru and Manus Island. Conditions became so dire that suicides, untreated illnesses, and abuse were rampant. Transfers to and from these islands created a cycle of uncertainty designed to deter arrivals.
- Europe enforces the Dublin Regulation, requiring asylum seekers to remain in the first EU country they enter. The result has been overcrowding in camps in Greece and Italy, along with forced transfers across borders that disrupt asylum cases and tear families apart.
- Libya, funded by the European Union, detains migrants intercepted in the Mediterranean. Reports of torture, slavery, and death are widespread. People are routinely moved between secret facilities, leaving families with no knowledge of their fate.
- Mexico, under pressure from the U.S., detains Central American migrants in facilities notorious for overcrowding and neglect. Detainees are frequently shuffled between centers without explanation.
- South Africa operates detention sites like Lindela, where migrants are routinely transferred and held in conditions condemned by human rights groups.
Across continents, the logic is the same: frequent transfers disorient detainees, weaken legal protections, and assert control through instability.
The Psychological Toll
The impacts of transfers reach far beyond logistical inconvenience. For detainees, each transfer is a fresh trauma layered upon existing scars from displacement, persecution, or war.
“You never sleep peacefully,” said one deported man. “Every morning, you wonder if today is the day they come for you.”
Psychologists who work with migrants describe chronic anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress linked to detention. Transfers amplify the instability: they sever fragile support systems, erase legal progress, and leave detainees in a state of constant uncertainty.
Families suffer as well. Parents wait by silent phones, uncertain if loved ones are still in the same state or even the same country. Children struggle with the unexplained absence of mothers or fathers suddenly transferred thousands of miles away.
Profits in Motion
Beyond control, transfers generate profit. Each flight, each bus ride, each bed-night in detention is a line item in multimillion-dollar contracts.
Private prison corporations like GEO Group and CoreCivic manage vast detention networks and stand to gain from filled beds. Charter companies run immigration flights for hefty fees. Even local governments profit through contracts to house detainees in county jails.
“Every transfer is money for someone,” said one immigration researcher. “There’s an economic incentive to keep people moving, regardless of necessity.”
International Law and Broken Promises
International human rights law is unambiguous: detention of migrants should be a measure of last resort, not a default. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has repeatedly emphasized that arbitrary transfers and restricted access to legal counsel violate global norms.
Yet nations continue to justify detention and transfers as administrative necessities. Meanwhile, lawsuits challenging conditions often take years to resolve, during which detainees remain trapped in the machinery.
“The law says one thing, but the practice is entirely different,” explained a human rights lawyer. “It’s a system designed not for justice, but for control.”
Alternatives Exist
Alternatives to detention are not only possible — they are proven. Programs allowing migrants to live in communities while reporting to authorities boast compliance rates of more than 90 percent. Case management approaches, where NGOs support asylum seekers with housing and legal guidance, are cheaper and far more humane than detention.
Canada and parts of Europe have tested such models with success. In the U.S., small pilot programs have shown similar results. But governments continue to expand detention and transfers, often driven by political pressures and private profit rather than necessity.
Conclusion: Planes in the Dark
The men sent to Alaska eventually returned to Washington. Some were deported. Others remain in limbo. None know if they will be transferred again.
“We’re not animals,” one said. “Animals are treated better.”
His words resonate far beyond Alaska. They echo in the offshore camps of Nauru, the detention blocks of Libya, the holding cells of Mexico, and the airport hangars of Europe.
Transfers are more than logistical moves. They are a system of disorientation and control that undermines justice, fractures families, and erodes human dignity.
Until governments confront the abuses embedded in immigration detention, the planes will keep flying, the shackles will keep clinking, and families will keep waiting by silent phones, wondering where their loved ones have gone.
