Trump Is Using a Donor’s Private Jet to Deport Palestinians

When private industry refused, Donald Trump tapped his extraordinarily wealthy allies to deport Palestinians back to the West Bank for him.

On January 21, eight Palestinian men were flown from an Arizona airport to Tel Aviv thanks to Florida real estate magnate Gil Dezer, one of Trump’s biggest private donors and a longtime business partner.

Dezer, the son of Israeli American billionaire Michael Dezer, is also an old friend of Donald Trump Jr. and a member of the Miami branch of Friends of the Israel Defense Forces.

The deportees’ trip aboard Dezer’s sleek, 16-seat private jet was a part of a “secretive and politically sensitive US government operation to deport Palestinians arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the Israeli-occupied West Bank,” reported The Guardian.

Dezer’s involvement in ICE’s operations came weeks after Avelo Airlines, the primary commercial air fleet that carried out the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda, canceled its contract with the federal government over mounting public pressure.

And earlier this week, Dezer’s plane was caught shipping more Palestinian deportees. The jet landed at the Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, where the deportees were met by a swarm of Israeli security personnel and shepherded by armed guards to a checkpoint near the West Bank village of Ni’lin.

“They dropped us off like animals on the side of the road,” Maher Awad, a 24-year-old who was born in the West Bank but had spent nearly a decade in the U.S., told The Guardian. “We went to a local house, we knocked on the door, we were like: ‘Please help us out.’”

The tail of Dezer’s jet is unmistakable, bearing the logo of Dezer Development, his father’s company. The Dezers and Trump have collaborated for the better part of the last two decades, building several Trump-branded properties in Miami.

The luxury aircraft reportedly made four “removal flights” prior to its trips to Israel, according to data from Human Rights First, an organization that tracks deportation efforts. Those included trips to Kenya, Liberia, Guinea, and Eswatini, all of which have taken place since October.

In an interview with Traded Miami in November, Dezer spoke of his “love” for Trump and said that he’s “very proud of the job he’s doing” in office.