Delaware leaders and residents cheered the arrival of Avelo Airlines two years ago as the only company scheduling passenger flights in and out of the state’s major airport, Wilmington (ILG).

The Texas-based company has added some routes since then, while cutting others. Avelo promotes its low-cost flights and on-time performance through Wilmington to travelers across the Philadelphia area.

But Avelo’s acknowledgment that it contracted earlier this year to join several other air services in flying chartered jet-loads of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportees from its charter-flight center in Mesa, Arizona, to ICE processing centers or foreign countries has provoked protest in the First State and other places Avelo serves.

“We don’t want to lose Avelo. But we hope they pull back from these deportations, which we are concerned are taking place without due process” by ICE and U.S. courts, said Lucy Comstock Gay, a retiree who helped lead more than 100 protesters, including members of the Democratic local organizing group Indivisible, outside the Avelo terminal near New Castle, Delaware, on April 25.

A smaller group returned to picket Avelo in the rain on May 22, and organizers plan protests again Saturday in coordination with a national network called the “Coalition to Stop Avelo,” which says it will organize pickets in at least 30 of the 54 cities where Avelo schedules flights.

The protests are designed to be “peaceful, nonviolent, and law-abiding,” Matt Boulay, an organizer for the coalition, said at a news conference Wednesday.

“As for any protests, the safety and well-being of our crew members, customers and all individuals involved is our highest priority,” Courtney Goff, a spokesperson for Avelo, said in a written statement. “While we recognize the right of individuals to peacefully assemble, Avelo’s main priority will continue to be maintaining the safety and timeliness of our operation.”

She said the company had no further comment on the ICE flights.

Some Democrats push back

The protesters’ goal, according to Boulay, is to stop Avelo from profiting from mass deportations — “or shut them down.” Also at the news conference was New York State Sen. Patricia Fahy, a Democrat, a sponsor of legislation that would deny state contracts and tax subsidies to airlines that deport residents unless they are the subject of judicial orders and have legal counsel.

Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer, who in his previous position as New Castle County executive welcomed Avelo to the state, has sympathized with the critics, Spotlight Delaware reported. Meyer, a Democrat, is personally boycotting the airline, canceling his planned Avelo family vacation flight to Puerto Rico.

Avelo’s contract to use the airport is with its longtime operator, the Delaware River and Bay Authority, whose board includes officials from both Delaware and New Jersey, complicating potential efforts by either state to put pressure on the company.

”The Delaware River and Bay Authority is aware of the protests — both here and at other locations — regarding Avelo Airlines’ business decision to contract with the federal government to perform deportation flights,” said James E. Salmon, DRBA’s director of communications and marketing. “The DRBA understands the reasoning behind their business decision and acknowledged it’s their decision to make.”

Fellow Democratic officials including Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, the mayor of New Haven, one of Avelo’s busiest destinations, and others whose communities host Avelo have also urged the airline to stop cooperating with what a Sonoma County supervisor called “the deportation industrial complex.“ Avelo left Sonoma in early April, after one of the five elected supervisors called on the county to ban the airline, citing its deportation contract.

Meyer has said Congress should update the nation’s immigration system so immigrant workers in Delaware’s chicken-processing plants and other food industries — and their employers — aren’t subject to fears of chaotic raids and shutdowns.

Avelo’s critics note that Congress has given ICE wide latitude to stop and detain people who it suspects may be in the U.S. illegally. President Donald Trump has vowed to expel millions of undocumented foreign workers and their family members. ICE agents this year wrongly flew at least 50 legal immigrants to detention in a El Salvador prison, according to a Cato Institute report, and have deported Southeast Asians to South Sudan, a poor and civil-war-torn nation in East Africa.

Who those flights carry, where they’re going, and whether federal judges have the power to halt or turn them around have all become the concerns of advocates for immigrants. In 2023, ICE Air removed over 140,000 noncitizens on more than 8,000 flights, an average of 32 flight a day, Simple Flying reported.

Avelo needs the money

In April 2021, Avelo began flying travelers between an initial 11 West Coast cities. It has since expanded to 93 routes serving 54 U.S. airports in 21 states and Puerto Rico, plus Mexico and three Caribbean nations. The company has been adding new routes at the rate of just over one per week.

Wilmington is one of several “base” airports where Avelo crews and planes are stationed. Others include New Haven, Connecticut; Hollywood Burbank, near Los Angeles; Lakeland, Florida; three in North Carolina; and Mesa, Arizona, where Avelo began flying what it calls removal flights to deport people detained by ICE on April 17. Activists say Avelo has transported deportees to Texas airports near ICE Mexican border processing centers, and to Guatemala.

Avelo CEO Andrew Levy has said the airline needs the money. The 4-year-old company announced its first profit in the early months of 2024 but suffered “a big loss” last winter, though Levy hopes to raise millions from investors to boost its cash position and expand routes, Brian Sumers wrote recently in the Airline Observer newsletter.

Avelo has both added and cut service at a number of airports recently, opening 14 new routes in the first quarter, while cutting 11, according to Aeroroutes. The pattern suggests “an airline trying to find its way in a very competitive market,” according to a report in the newsletter OAG.

A spokesperson for Avelo said the company is private and, while disputing the newsletter characterization, won’t discuss its recent financial results.

(Staff writer Jeff Gammage contributed to this article.)

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