Avelo Airlines, one of a small handful of airlines providing deportation flights for the U.S. government, says it will stop working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Jan. 27.
“We moved a portion of our fleet into a government program which promised more financial stability but placed us in the center of a political controversy,” CEO Andrew Levy told employees in an internal email reviewed by CNBC.
Levy added that “the program provided short-term benefits but ultimately did not deliver enough consistent and predictable revenue to overcome its operational complexity and costs.”
In a “fun” bit of corporate obfuscation, Avelo spokesperson Courtney Goff told WHYY the company never had a federal contract to provide deportation flights, because the company was technically a subcontractor of CSI Aviation.
CSI Aviation does have a contract for ICE deportation flights. The Department of Homeland Security has allocated up to $585 million to the company for a contract that runs through next month.
