‘Dumped at a checkpoint’: US exposed for secret deportation of Palestinians via Israeli billionaire’s jet

Fresh revelations have emerged about the controversial US deportation of Palestinians using private jets owned by an Israeli billionaire. Reports published last month revealed that the US has been quietly removing Palestinian men to the illegally occupied West Bank aboard a private aircraft owned by a close associate of Donald Trump.

Now, new details uncovered by +972 Magazine and The Guardian — in a joint investigation titled “U.S. secretly deporting Palestinians to West Bank in coordination with Israel” — shed more light on how the deportations were carried out.

According to the exposé, the US coordinated the removals directly with Israeli authorities. The men were shackled for the entire journey and eventually dropped at a military checkpoint in the West Bank without assistance.

Human rights organisations say the findings raise serious concerns about the lack of due process, violations of international law, and the mistreatment of stateless individuals.

At least eight Palestinian men were deported earlier this year from an ICE detention hub in Phoenix, Arizona, flown aboard a Gulfstream IV jet owned by Israeli-American property magnate Michael Dezer.

The aircraft, which made stops in New Jersey, Ireland, and Bulgaria, landed at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, where the detainees were handed over to Israeli authorities and later released near the town of Ni’lin.

This highly irregular arrangement appears to have been coordinated with Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency, bypassing standard procedures. A second flight took place weeks later, though details remain sparse.

Read: Israel deports 32 foreign activists for supporting Palestinian farmers against settler violence in West Bank

Legal experts have condemned the practice. “This transfer violates the principle of non-refoulement,” said Gissou Nia of the Atlantic Council. “The US is bound by international treaties, including the Convention against Torture, that prohibit sending people to places where they risk persecution.”

Among those deported was Maher Awad, 24, who had lived in the US for nearly a decade and was awaiting the birth of his son in Michigan. He was arrested by police after calling them to report a break-in and was detained over a domestic violence charge that had already been dropped. Despite the charge being dismissed, he was picked up by ICE, held for nearly a year, and deported. “Everything I knew was in the US,” he said. “I just want to see my son.”

Some of the men had been detained for so long without contact that their families believed they were missing. A local professor who found them at the checkpoint said they were cold, disoriented, and hadn’t eaten.

Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard called the operation “an exceptional case.” He said: “I don’t know of any cases where Palestinians were able to reach the West Bank through Ben Gurion Airport — not even humanitarian cases, with the exception of VIPs. So I think some kind of specific interest made this possible.”

The flights were arranged by Journey Aviation, a Florida-based contractor frequently used by ICE. The jet used is registered to Dezer’s company and is believed to have cost US taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars per flight.

Rights groups are now urging the US administration to freeze all deportations of Palestinians and launch a full investigation. They argue that dumping stateless people into occupied territory via a foreign government undermines US legal obligations and basic human rights.