President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda has a surprising stakeholder: Bill Gates.
The multibillionaire tech mogul and philanthropist owns a large portion of a key service provider for immigration flights.
And now, with new funding from Congress and an aggressive push from the White House, more and more immigration flights are taking off, transporting immigration detainees both within the United States and to their home countries — or, in some cases, to places they’ve never been before.
Gates’ connection to the U.S. detention and deportation machine is a company called Signature Aviation. Signature calls itself “the world’s largest network of private aviation terminals,” and it’s a linchpin in the day-to-day machinery of Trump’s immigration enforcement apparatus.
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Private charter carriers subcontracted for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to transport immigration detainees — part of a network known as “ICE Air,” a reference to the Department of Homeland Security’s ICE Air Operations — use Signature’s services daily. As a fixed-base operator, or FBO, Signature supplies ground crews, aviation fuel, boarding stairs, and airplane hangar space at hundreds of airports around the world, mostly in the United States.
The private firm that holds Gates’ and the Gates Foundation Trust’s assets, Cascade Investment, increased its stake in the company to 30% in 2021, when it and two partners bought Signature outright for $4.7 billion. Human rights advocates — plane trackers and activists who keep tabs on deportation flights, as well as the aviation and logistics companies profiting from them — say Gates’ stake in Signature is at odds with his humanitarian work, including the Gates Foundation’s support of a plethora of immigration-focused nonprofits. Without FBOs like Signature, they say, Trump’s mass deportation agenda would be stuck on the ground.
Gates himself has not publicly commented on Signature Aviation’s crucial role in servicing ICE Air flights. Neither the Gates Foundation nor Cascade Asset Management Company, which oversees Cascade Investment, responded to multiple requests for comment.
At one airport, Signature appears to have worked to make its branding less visibly associated with immigration flights. Last month, a set of Signature boarding stairs in Seattle — where the county government set up cameras in 2023 to keep an eye on immigration flights — got a new accessory: two sheets of cardboard, taped over the company’s logos.
A worker in a mask walks off a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement flight departing from King County International Airport-Boeing Field in Seattle on Aug. 23.
Lindsey Wasson/Associated Press
FBOs “are critical, obviously, because they provide fuel and other services while the plane makes its stops,” said Tom Cartwright, a retired financial executive who has tracked ICE flights for nearly six years.
Cartwright estimated that through the end of June, 95% of the ICE Air flights he’d tracked were operated by charter companies, with military and Coast Guard planes being used for the remainder. That doesn’t include a tally of commercial flights used to deport people, he said — but in fiscal year 2017, ICE Air used charter flights to remove or transfer 181,317 people, compared with just 8,288 who were removed on commercial flights, according to a 2019 DHS inspector general report.
“In this case, when they’re doing 1,100 flights a month, that’s a pretty significant piece of the operation — so they’re absolutely critical,” he said of the planes carrying immigration detainees. “Without a fixed-base operator, I’m not sure this system really operates.”
In a recent report covering local connections to alleged human rights violations stemming from the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement agenda, the University of Washington Center for Human Rights (UWCHR), which has studied ICE Air flights for years, called out Gates’ Signature Aviation investment specifically.
“In Washington, our most famous philanthropist grows his investments in part by supporting a company complicit in gross human rights abuses, potentially ascending to the level of crimes against humanity,” the report alleged.
Signature At Work
To report this story, HuffPost scoured government records and plane location data, collected plane-spotting reports from activists on the ground, and matched aviation photographs to planes known to ferry ICE detainees. Still, ICE Air operates largely in the shadows, and many key players, including Signature Aviation, did not answer detailed questions about their operations.
So we wanted to see the process for ourselves. On Aug. 31, HuffPost witnessed Signature Aviation in action. On the tarmac of Newark Liberty International Airport, a couple hundred yards from Signature’s private terminal, a Signature-branded set of boarding stairs and fuel tanker met a Boeing 737 belonging to Avelo Airlines, the low-cost carrier that has faced protests and a boycott from potential passengers over its work with ICE Air. Like other Avelo planes working ICE Air flights, this plane, with the tail number N801XT, was recently painted completely white, erasing any prominent Avelo branding.
One by one, 16 people dressed in white and gray, and shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles, hobbled off the plane and onto Signature Aviation’s boarding stairs, unable to reach the handrail on the stairs. On the tarmac, the second man in line shuffled his feet slightly, taking uneven steps as his head drooped, making him look older than the rest. The plane had just finished a two-and-a-half-hour flight from Alexandria, Louisiana, a central hub for ICE Air flights, meaning the men had likely been shackled for several hours straight. The detainees waited on the tarmac as they were processed into sprinter vans with flashing police lights. A Signature-branded fuel tanker sidled up to the plane, and personnel on the ground hauled plastic mesh bags known to be used for detainees’ personal belongings. Eventually, accompanied by Port Authority police vehicles, the caravan left the tarmac, likely heading to nearby ICE detention facilities.
Two weeks prior, HuffPost saw a similar scene play out, when a plane operated by Eastern Air Express — the same aircraft CNN recently spotted ferrying people in ICE custody — was met with similar fanfare at Newark. Law enforcement vehicles with flashing lights approached that plane as well, including one that looked similar to a shuttle bus previously filmed transporting detainees out of Delaney Hall, the infamous immigration jail.
In both cases, after about an hour on the ground, the planes continued on their way around the country, ferrying people in ICE custody to other detention facilities, and for some, onto their ultimate deportation, according to one activist plane spotter who goes by the moniker “JJ in DC” on Bluesky and who helped HuffPost track the aircraft.
“In Washington, our most famous philanthropist grows his investments in part by supporting a company complicit in gross human rights abuses, potentially ascending to the level of crimes against humanity.”
– Recent report from the University of Washington Center for Human Rights
Such scenes are now commonplace throughout the country. But they are not new. For over a decade, private aviation contractors have handled tens of thousands of ICE Air flights, according to Cartwright’s count, which can collectively transfer or remove hundreds of thousands of people annually.
Recent video from King County’s cameras at Boeing Field-King County International Airport in Seattle shows a grim parade of detainees. One climbs a set of boarding stairs while shackled and holding a cane. Another, also shackled — detainees generally are, including during flights — is manhandled by several guards who run him onto the plane; a few feet before Signature’s staircase, the group stumbles and the man falls onto the tarmac.
“The use of restraints on detainees during deportation flights is a standard ICE protocol and an essential measure to ensure the safety and well-being of both detainees and the officers/agents accompanying them,” an unidentified DHS spokesperson told HuffPost in a statement. “Our practices align with those followed by other relevant authorities and is fully in line with established legal standards.”
“ICE takes its commitment to promoting safe, secure, humane environments for those in our custody very seriously,” the statement added. “ICE Air Operations flights are law enforcement sensitive. ICE conducts flights throughout the U.S. on a daily basis. For operational security purposes, ICE does not discuss ongoing or future operations.”
U.S. and Signature Aviation flags fly outside Signature Aviation’s Newark Liberty International Airport terminal.
Illustration: HuffPost; Photo: Will Tooke/HuffPost
Activists working to end ICE Air’s presence in Seattle have zeroed in on Signature’s work as a service provider for charter flights.
“The presence of Signature is essential for ICE to be within the airport, because without having a fixed-base operator to service the planes, they can’t land there, and no one else is doing this type of work,” said Guadalupe Gonzalez, flight monitoring coordinator for La Resistencia, an immigrant-led activist group in Washington state that seeks to end immigrant detention and deportation. “Signature Aviation specifically are the ones responsible for servicing ICE at Boeing Field.”
Gonzalez said La Resistencia volunteers, who observe ICE Air transfers in person at Boeing Field, have in recent years reported seeing detainees bound in the “WRAP” restraint system, a type of full-body restraint device that has come under scrutiny in the past. More commonly, Gonzalez said, people with mobility issues were made to walk up Signature’s stairs to a waiting ICE Air flight.
Not having a presence at Boeing Field, Gonzalez said, “would impair [ICE’s] efforts to deport as many people as possible — or, at the very minimum, make it more costly.”
Signature Aviation did not answer a lengthy list of questions about its practices, including its involvement with ICE Air. Instead, the company sent a one-sentence statement.
“Our FBOs must accept flight operations that comply with the law, FAA regulations and contract requirements at federally funded airports,” said Rosanna Fiske, the company’s global head of corporate affairs.
Fiske did not respond to follow-up questions about the nature of Signature’s obligations, including the terms of contracts it may have signed with ICE Air charter operators.
‘Don’t Want Bill’s Name In The Headlines’
Gates is a significant shareholder in Signature Aviation. Cascade Investment LLC, the holding company for Gates’ and the Gates Foundation’s assets, first bought a piece of the company’s predecessor, BBA Aviation, in 2009. In 2021, a bidding war broke out over the company, and Gates’ Cascade — then Signature’s largest individual shareholder, with a 19% stake — joined forces with Blackstone Group and Global Infrastructure Partners to buy it outright. (Global Infrastructure Partners was acquired by BlackRock in 2024.)
Working together, the three firms bought Signature for $4.7 billion, with Cascade winding up with 30% of the company.
Cascade Investment LLC is overseen by Cascade Asset Management Company. That firm’s chief investment officer is Michael Larson, who has Gates’ “complete trust and faith,” Gates said in 2014, at a party he threw celebrating the 20th anniversary of Larson managing his assets. The Wall Street Journal reported at the time that their arrangement was “simple: Mr. Larson makes money, and Mr. Gates gives it away.” Cascade Investment is located in the same Kirkland, Washington, office park as Gates’ personal office, The New York Times noted in a 2021 story. Cascade’s mandate, one unnamed former employee told the Times for the same story, was: “We don’t want Bill’s name in the headlines.”
Cascade’s work on Gates’ behalf has come up in the news before.
For example, when The Land Report revealed in 2021 that Gates was “America’s largest private farmland owner,” what they were really talking about, as NBC News later described it, was farmland “purchased through a constellation of companies that all link back to [Bill and Melinda Gates’] investment group, Cascade Investments, based in Kirkland, Washington.” When Gates was asked about his farmland purchases, which made national news, he said, “My investment group chose to do this” and “all these decisions are made by a professional investment team.”
The same might apply to Signature Aviation. It’s unclear how much Gates knows about his stake in the company, or whether he knows that Signature plays such a crucial role in Trump’s mass deportation operation.
Still, “it would be surprising if Gates couldn’t influence a decision to disinvest of this particular investment,” said Cartwright, who before his retirement spent decades at J.P. Morgan, including as chief financial officer of one division that covered 5,000 bank branches.
The foundation has previously addressed concerns about its money being invested in Signature Aviation. One complaint recently filed through EthicsPoint, a public-facing portal to submit ethical concerns to the foundation, and later shared with HuffPost, accused the foundation of “providing material support for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement” through its investment in Signature.
In response, the foundation said it did not “control or participate in the activities of the Gates Foundation Trust.” Instead, the foundation said, the trust’s assets were “independently managed by Cascade Asset Management Company.”
Signature’s Footprint
Look closely and you’ll see Signature Aviation popping up across Trump’s mass deportation pipeline.
In fact, the company is part of perhaps the most infamous footage of Trump’s second term so far: an “ASMR” video that glorifies shackling and transporting immigration detainees. The video was filmed at Boeing Field, where the number of contracted ICE flights, all serviced by Signature Aviation, has shot up this year. It also happens to be a 20-minute drive from the Gates Foundation’s offices.
Signature’s distinct logo is visible at the top of a set of boarding stairs about five seconds into the clip:
Signature did not answer HuffPost’s inquiry about where it serviced ICE Air flights, but the company has had a significant footprint in servicing aviation contractors hired by ICE. In 2019, one internal ICE document listed Signature as the designated FBO for contracted ICE flights at 12 major domestic airports: Atlanta, Dallas, Newark, Houston, Laredo, Kansas City, Memphis, Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Chicago, San Diego, San Antonio, and Denver, where HuffPost recently spotted a set of Signature boarding stairs pulled up to another all-white Avelo Air plane.
And while it’s not clear whether ICE Air still uses every airport on the 2019 list, the list also doesn’t include airports where Signature has recently been spotted servicing ICE Air flights. For example, the 2019 document doesn’t include Seattle’s Boeing Field. Signature now frequently services ICE flights there, and detainees picked up at the airport have ended up in El Salvador’s CECOT prison, Guantánamo Bay, and South Sudan, according to the recent report from UWCHR. The human rights center previously obtained the 2019 list of airports that listed FBOs servicing the ICE flights pursuant to a public records request to ICE.
Signature also appears to be servicing immigration flights out of Jacksonville, Florida. One March email with the subject line “ICE Schedule This Week” notes several charter flights landing at Jacksonville International Airport. The activist group Ground ICE — which aims to “limit the rate at which I.C.E. can transport and remove its detainees” — obtained the document through a public records request and shared it with HuffPost. Recipients of the email included Signature Aviation’s Jacksonville manager as well as several email accounts associated with GEO Group, a private prison contractor.
In July, Fox 13 News Utah captured video of apparent immigration detainees climbing a set of Signature boarding stairs at Salt Lake City International Airport.
And Rolling Stone recently spotted a Coast Guard plane refueling and boarding ICE detainees at Baltimore/Washington International Airport. Independent journalist Gillian Brockell, who wrote the Rolling Stone story, told HuffPost that Signature Aviation refueled the plane.
Signature is also the only FBO at Buffalo Niagara International Airport, Ground ICE has noted. Planes carrying immigration detainees pass through that airport once or twice a week, according to Cartwright, who is currently transitioning his work over to the group Human Rights First.
‘Dehumanizing To A Lot Of Degrees’
Various entities involved with Gates’ ICE Air investment proclaim their commitment to human rights.
Signature Aviation itself says it is committed to “refraining from coercion and never deliberately causing harm to anyone” and that it takes steps “to confirm that our businesses and supply chains are free from modern slavery and human trafficking.” Another company policy requires that suppliers “never use, support, or engage in forced or indentured labor, or practices involving coercion, deception, or abuse of power — including human trafficking, slavery and child labor.” As part of its efforts to combat human trafficking, it says it works with the Department of Homeland Security. (ICE falls under the purview of DHS.)
Cascade says it takes “a value-oriented approach” to investing money for Gates and the Gates Foundation Trust, and that one of its objectives is to “protect Bill and the Trust by acting lawfully, honestly, ethically, and with integrity, safeguarding their assets and information.” It notes that “neither Cascade nor the Trust play a role in the grantmaking or operations of the foundation” and that the foundation “does not control or participate in the Trust’s investment activities.”
The Gates Foundation says its mission is to “create a world where every person has the opportunity to live a healthy, productive life,” and the foundation has awarded grants to multiple prominent immigration-focused nonprofits.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees disembark from an “ICE Air” flight at Newark Liberty International Airport using a set of Signature Aviation boarding stairs.
Photo: Matt Shuham/HuffPost
The experiences of immigration detainees traveling on ICE Air — particularly ICE’s use of shackles, which bind their wrists and ankles — seemingly stand in contrast to those commitments.
The shackles “felt very disrespectful, dehumanizing to a lot of degrees,” Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian activist jailed and threatened with deportation for his beliefs, recalled to Zeteo after his release from ICE custody in June.
After more than a day of travel, “by the time I arrived in Jena, [Louisiana, home to an infamous ICE jail,] I couldn’t walk because my leg was swollen from the shackles,” Khalil added.
Deportation flight passengers have alleged “the use of racist epithets and insults, and rough physical treatment upon boarding,” as well as, in more isolated cases, “beatings, the use of straitjackets, verbal abuse and threats, and the denial of access to restrooms,” according to a UWCHR summary of public records it received detailing the complaints.
In one case, a Somalia-bound deportation flight sat on a tarmac in Senegal for a full day due to technical issues, while detainees remained shackled inside and the plane’s toilets “overfilled with human waste,” according to a subsequent lawsuit. The plane eventually returned all of the detainees to the United States. (The suit was ultimately dismissed for jurisdictional reasons, and many of the people on the ill-fated flight continued to face deportation proceedings.)
Seattle Shows Vulnerabilities Of Private System
Relying on private contractors at every stage of the deportation process creates major vulnerabilities for ICE — which may be why the Trump administration is reportedly considering purchasing its own fleet of deportation planes.
While giant private prison companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group are dependent on federal contracts to survive, FBOs work in different economic conditions. Most rely on business from corporate and private jet travel, and they’re often subject to local political pressure. For example, Ground ICE has encouraged pilots to write to Signature Aviation and “let them know you will not be buying fuel from them” due to their work for ICE.
More than anywhere else, Seattle’s Boeing Field represents how local anti-deportation sentiment can affect FBOs and seriously slow down ICE’s work.
In 2019, amid pressure from local activist groups and an impactful report from UWCHR concerning “King County Collaboration with ICE Air Deportation Flights at Boeing Field,” then-King County executive Dow Constantine ordered, among other things, that future leases at Boeing Field contain a prohibition against the private transport of immigration detainees. The FBO for those flights at the time, Modern Aviation, stopped servicing them soon after that executive order, even though the order was ultimately blocked in court. Two other FBOs at the airport, including Signature, also said they “will not take over from Modern in servicing ICE flights,” The Seattle Times reported at the time, citing the airport’s director. (Matt Dill, general manager at Modern Aviation’s location at Boeing Field, declined to comment.)
“Without the help of such companies,” the paper reported, “flights cannot operate at the airport. Though they can technically take off and land, [airport director John] Parrott said, flights need a company to open gates, to provide stairs to get passengers on and off planes, and to offer fuel.”
Without an FBO in Seattle, ICE was forced to route planes through Yakima — where the airport was smaller, more remote, and hours inland. In a court filing, the Trump administration said it only landed on the remote airport after approaching three others “without success.”
The Trump administration also acknowledged at the time that this shift jammed the gears of its deportation machinery, particularly when it came to people detained at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma.
“Transporting detainees from Tacoma to Yakima, as compared to Tacoma to Boeing Field, adds, at a minimum, six hours of travel time to the process of executing an ICE Air flight,” the filing read.
“Additionally,” it continued, “the transport to Yakima and back frequently requires the use of an additional bus and two additional officers, as well as additional meal and fuel costs. This takes resources away from federal law enforcement tasks that would otherwise be performed if the ICE Air flights were flying out of Boeing Field. Relocation of the ICE Air flights to Yakima also impacts ICE operations in Yakima, requiring ICE to utilize staffing of at least two officers from its Yakima sub-office to facilitate the flight processing in Yakima. Additionally, travel over the mountain passes in winter is hazardous, and frequently either slowed significantly by road conditions or suspended altogether, as was the case on January 14, 2020, when an ICE Air flight had to be cancelled due to road conditions prohibiting transport.”
On March 30, 2023, a federal judge ruled against the county’s executive order requiring future FBO leases to prohibit work on deportation flights.
“At that time, Signature Aviation said, ‘OK, we’ll do that business,’” recalled Angelina Snodgrass Godoy, the director of UWCHR. “Ever since then, the ICE flights have resumed at Boeing Field, and they’re being served by Signature Aviation.”
Local public radio station KNKX described Signature at the time as “the fixed-base operator that agreed to service ICE flights at Boeing Field.”
By May 2, four years after ICE Air flights stopped at Boeing Field, they resumed again, according to records of the flights kept by the county. Signature has been their sole service provider ever since, according to the same records.
“Without a fixed-base operator, I’m not sure this system really operates.”
– Tom Cartwright, a retired financial executive who has tracked ICE flights for nearly six years
For Godoy, the years-long absence of deportation flights running through Seattle shows just how important FBOs like Signature Aviation are.
“Here in Seattle, what we saw in 2019 and to this date, was that when there was enough local concern, and people expressing local outrage about it, that the other FBOs also didn’t want to do it,” she said.
“There are businesses who will say, ‘No, we don’t want this, we don’t want to be associated with this.’”
Local pressure also may have recently disrupted ICE Air operations on the other side of the country. Last month, after media attention and local protest over the spike in immigration flights from Hanscom Field in Bedford, Massachusetts — including specific attention on Signature Aviation for servicing the flights — the ICE Air flights to that airport stopped, instead going through Portsmouth International Airport at Pease in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where Signature does not have a presence.
“It was because the activists were so annoying, basically, to that airfield, and they were so focused on Signature, that they decided to shift to [Portsmouth International Airport] as the hub for New England,” JJ in DC posited to HuffPost, referring to the shift from Massachusetts to New Hampshire.
Godoy also speculated that the shift came in response to protest.
“My impression is that, for Signature, the ICE flights are only a portion of their business, and not the majority of their business — and when the ICE flights become sufficiently notorious, that threatens Signature’s overall business, and then they say ‘no thanks,’” she said.
“And it looks to me — this is speculation, because I’m not privy to the discussions between ICE and Signature — like that’s what happened at Hanscom Field,” Godoy added. “So now, ICE is going to be using a more far-away airport, which is more inconvenient for them. And they haven’t said why.”
Still, even apparent route changes may not last: Two flights from Avelo Airlines planes landed at Hanscom Field on Friday and Saturday, flight records show. The airline, ICE, and Signature Aviation did not respond to questions about the purpose of the flights.
It’s Not Just Bill
The financial backing behind Signature Aviation doesn’t stop with Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation.
Annual financial reports reviewed by HuffPost show several large public pension funds are also stakeholders in Signature.
Institutional investors Blackstone and BlackRock (via Global Infrastructure Partners) own the remainder of the company that Gates does not. And those massive asset management firms often invest money in various funds on behalf of public pensions, nonprofits and university endowments.
One such fund, a BlackRock product called Global Infrastructure Partners Fund IV, has 68 such limited partners, according to data from PitchBook, a private-equity market database.
That includes the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, a public pension that in 2023 held more than $350 million of the fund; the New York State Common Retirement Fund; the Utah State University endowment; the Oregon Public Employees Retirement System; the Washington State Investment Board; and more than 60 others.
BlackRock and the California Public Employees’ Retirement System declined to comment. The New York State Common Retirement Fund, Oregon Investment Council (which manages OPERS’ investments) and the Utah State University endowment didn’t respond. A spokesperson for WSIB told HuffPost that, as a policy, it does not comment on individual holdings.
Washington’s stake was flagged by UWCHR, which warned in its recent report that “public workers’ retirements are being financed in part through investments in organizations that profit from the detention and deportation of our neighbors.”
A handful of public pension funds are also invested in a similar offering from Blackstone, called Blackstone Infrastructure Partners. They include the New Mexico State Investment Council, the Orange County Employees’ Retirement System, Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System, and the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, according to the PitchBook data.
Blackstone didn’t respond to a request for comment, nor did the New Mexico State Investment Council. A spokesperson for the Teacher Retirement System of Texas declined to comment, citing a Texas law that prohibits discussing specific investments. The Orange County Employees’ Retirement System and Pennsylvania Public School Employees Retirement System similarly declined to comment.
Azani Creeks, a senior campaign and research coordinator at PESP, a nonprofit watchdog organization focused on the private equity industry, told HuffPost that people whose pensions rely on these investments are entitled to have a say in their composition.
“You can contact pension fund staff and trustees by email to schedule a meeting, and often, pension funds have regular meetings with public comment periods in which you can communicate your concerns,” Creeks said.
“A handful of private equity firms, drawing on capital from pension funds, foundations, endowments, insurance companies, and other institutional investors, exert major influence through investments in companies providing services to immigrant detention facilities and migrant shelters around the United States.”
JJ in DC noted that in his work tracking immigration flights, he’s been struck by just how opaque the process is. The Department of Homeland Security contracts with its main broker, CSI Aviation, which works with a network of subcontractors including GlobalX, Avelo and Eastern Air Express. Those firms in turn work with FBOs like Signature Aviation. Along the way, airplanes have been made harder to spot — with some losing all of their external branding or being taken off public flight trackers, though their information is still available on crowdsourced networks like ADS-B Exchange. (Anyone with the correct receiver can contribute to the site, which presents location information broadcast by individual aircraft over radio waves as an interactive and real-time, though not always complete, map of global aviation traffic.)
The result, in the end, are taxpayer dollars quietly contributing to the portfolios of people like Gates and the Gates Foundation Trust.
“This is a big pressure point,” JJ in DC told HuffPost. “And if more people apply pressure, it’s going to hurt their operations, and they’re going to have to adjust.”
Matt Shuham reported from New York. Ryan Grenoble reported from Denver.