‘The poor reputation of buyer’: Talking to Chicagoans about ICE’s connection to their parking meters

On Friday, July 17, I was invited to speak at the Chicago city council's Committee for Immigrant and Refugee Rights meeting, capping off a flurry of activity with Chicagoland folks recently. As you may have seen in the news, the company that owns the city's parking meters is trying to sell them to Stonepeak, the private-equity firm that also owns ICE charter Omni Air International and the subject of my Mother Jones story "ICE Flights Are Getting Longer And Crueler" from earlier this year.

After a bid by Mayor Brandon Johnson to buy the meters back failed, the council has only the ability to vote yay or nay on the Stonepeak deal. And they can only vote against it on limited grounds, which includes the poor reputation of the buyer. So for the past few weeks, I have been trying to let anyone and everyone in the Chicago know about the poor reputation of the buyer – that is, the ongoing human-rights abuses Stonepeak has been profiting off of since April 2025.

And I had my work cut out for me, because Stonepeak had already papered local media with false and deceptive statements about conditions on Omni's ICE flights. And at a June Finance Committee meeting, Stonepeak rep James Wyper put on a good aw-shucks show – to the point where one alderman remarked he was "starting to like Mr. Wyper" – while casting doubt on my reporting, deflecting substantive answers and pretending to be transparent. (As you may notice, I am very heated about my facts being discounted by a guy providing zero evidence for his claims.)

On July 8, Alderman Andre Vasquez (40th) hosted me for a public webinar ahead of scheduled votes in the Finance Committee and full council the following week. It's the first 15 minutes of the video here:

Former congressional candidate and Broadview Sixer Kat Abughazaleh attended the webinar and followed up with this great video callout:

Then, at the July 13 finance meeting, chairwoman Pat Dowell surprised everyone by announcing the deadline for approving the deal had been extended (until Sept. 30, the Chicago Sun-Times later reported), and the vote that day would not take place.

So, later that week, I was invited to speak again at the immigrants' committee meeting, this time focusing on the reputation angle of rejecting the deal. You can listen to that here (starts at 3:31:00, it was a long meeting), but for the sake of ease, I also wanted to leave the text below.

So, I think what I have to contribute to this issue is essentially done, but I'm grateful to the good people of Chicago for letting me hop into their politics for a minute, especially Ald. Vasquez's policy chief Pooja Ravindran. And if you live in Chicago and haven't contacted your alderperson yet, please click on this toolkit they made and get at it.

Thank you so much to the committee for allowing me to speak today. My name is Gillian Brockell. I wrote the recent Mother Jones investigation titled "ICE Flights Are Getting Longer and Crueler," which is all about Omni Air International since its purchase by Stonepeak.

Before my ICE flight reporting, I was a staff writer at The Washington Post, where I worked for a decade. And I hold a master's degree in business journalism from Medill, just up the road from y'all. Before journalism, I was a flight attendant, so I am uniquely qualified to speak on this topic.

My top line is: If the only way for the council to reject this deal with legal cover is due to the poor reputation of the potential buyer, I believe the information I have about Omni and Stonepeak more than meets that criteria.

In my Mother Jones story I reported that since Stonepeak bought Omni in mid-April 2025, the number of ICE flights they've done have nearly quadrupled. At the June 25 finance committee hearing, Stonepeak's representative James Wyper told the committee he quote "did not believe that to be accurate."

My evidence is based on public flight data for all of Omni's aircraft between mid-April 2025, when Stonepeak took over, and December 31, 2025, and the same period in 2024 for comparison. I only included flights that exhibited all of the known criteria for ICE flights, which I can tell you more about later if you care. Many of these flights have been confirmed by other major media outlets, not just me, and I crosschecked my data with Human Rights First and Witness at the Border, which puts out monthly reports about all ICE flights.

In fact, my data is pretty conservative. There may very well have been more Omni ICE flights that I didn't include because they didn't meet all of the known criteria. And I also didn't include stops that may have been fuel stops, even though they may have been deportation stops as well.

Now, let's look at Mr. Wyper's evidence for his claim to the council that he "did not believe [this] to be accurate." As far as I know, he hasn't provided any.

Next, in the story I report that under Stonepeak the flights were getting longer and, because of that, crueler, and that during one Omni ICE trip, passengers were shackled for at least 82 hours. Mr. Wyper said he quote "couldn't speak to" the claim of increased cruelty, and that Stonepeak had investigated the 82-hour claim and quote "found no evidence" of that.

So again, my claim these flights were getting longer under Stonepeak is based on public flight data, counting the number of hours between takeoff from an ICE detention hub to arrival at its final deportation stop, for the same periods in 2025 and 2024, and seeing how many lasted longer than 24 hours. You'll see the chart Mother Jones included based on that data in your packets.

The claim the length of these flights has increased their cruelty came from speaking with Judy Melinek, a medical doctor and forensic pathologist who is an expert on shackling. Nearly all adult passengers and some children on ICE flights are shackled in leg irons and handcuffs attached to a chain around their waists for the duration of the trip. This has been widely reported, there are thousands of photos, and ICE Air Operations says it in their own handbook. Melinek told me prolonged shackling can cause excruciating pain, permanent nerve damage, cuts and bruising, mental injury, and a dramatically increased risk of developing blood clots, which can become deadly days or weeks after people have been deported. She called it torture, and she compared it to the boxcars the Nazis put Jews in to take them to them to concentration camps.

Mr. Wyper may not be able to speak to that, but Dr. Melinek sure could. So could Melissa Tran, a 45-year-old mother of four who was shackled for two days on an Omni plane while being deported to Vietnam. She told me, "I was aching all over. I felt like I was less than an animal."

Omni is the only large-jet charter willing to do deportations of this length. It has been this way for a long time, and they are getting worse.

Now where did I get 82 hours? This was based on flight data, counting the hours that passed between when an Omni ICE trip began in El Paso on the evening of December 14th and when it finally finished in Vietnam four days later. I confirmed the passengers were shackled the whole time with an immigration attorney for some of the Vietnamese passengers. They were too afraid to speak to me, but their attorney showed me text messages where they described their inhumane treatment. And after the Mother Jones story published, I spoke with a former Omni flight attendant who was on that trip, who also confirmed it.

Now, let's look at the basis for Mr. Wyper's claim that Stonepeak investigated and "found no evidence" of this. As far as I know, he has not provided the council with any basis for his claim.

My Mother Jones story also mentioned an Omni ICE trip lasting 75 hours, which was confirmed by flight data and a passenger on the trip, who said at least 20 elderly passengers were so weakened from being shackled for days on end that they had be carried off of the plane when they arrived at their countries of origin.

In 2026, I've recorded twenty-one more Omni ICE trips that lasted longer than 24 hours, including trips lasting 48 hours, 51 hours, 59 hours and 68 hours.

Those are minimum times that the passengers were shackled. Several passengers and now three former Omni flight attendants have told me that Omni's ICE flights take about four hours to board, and that passengers are shackled that whole time, too.

Now I would like to direct your attention to this statement from Stonepeak to the council, quoted in Crain's Business Chicago, saying, quote "Omni personnel do not interact with passengers as ICE agents handle all passenger interactions."

This statement is simply not true. While it is true that on all ICE flights, flight attendants have little interaction with the passengers, the bulk of it is done not by ICE agents but by ICE-contracted prison guards. This has been widely reported by outlets like ProPublica, not just me. On Omni's ICE flights, this is generally 30 to 40 guards from the GEO Group, which also runs two dozen ICE detention centers.

All of the passengers and crew on Omni ICE flights that I spoke with told me that, like the private prisons where ICE detainees are held, the lights are kept on and the planes are kept freezing cold the entire length of the trip. They all also said that while some of the guards are "nice," others clearly enjoy controlling and dehumanizing the migrant passengers. They all reported hearing guards threaten the passengers for supposed infractions, like asking to stand up and stretch because they were in immense pain, or asking to speak to their attorney, and some reported guards using racial slurs and not allowing passengers to use the restroom to the point they soiled themselves. All of the flight attendants I talked to said that was a regular occurrence. The flight attendants who had done ICE flights to Africa reported guards wrapping some passengers being put in a full-body straitjacket known as the WRAP device for supposed infractions like asking for their heart medication. They also said that the guards and federal agents constantly told them not to feel bad for the passengers, because they were all rapists and murderers.

They also said that the guards frequently refused to comply with flight attendants' safety instructions, including screaming at and threatening the flight attendants, and that when they would report this to their supervisors, their supervisors would say, "Just make the client happy, we need the money."

To be clear, I don't know why Stonepeak failed to mention the presence of dozens of prisons guards on all their ICE flights. But it is notable to me that they failed to mention it.

He also said he’d been assured none of “their people” had done “the behaviors.” But they are happening on their planes, and their employees are being subjected to it. 

Wyper also said he'd been assure none of "their people" had taken park in "the behaviors," but they are happening on their planes, and their employees are being subjected to the moral injury of witnessing it and not being able to do anything about it.

All three former Omni flight attendants told me that when they’ve asked their supervisors how are they are supposed to evacuate 200 shackled people within 90 seconds, which is what all flight attendants are federally mandated to know how to do, no one will answer them. They have received no training on this, which is a violation of federal aviation regulations under Part 121, and when they can get an answer, the answer is: "Just save yourselves, let the immigrants die."

Now let's talk about third-country deportations, where immigrants are being to countries where they have no ties, and in many cases, have never even been to countries where they are being dumped. These removals may violate both US and international law and are being challenged in courts both here and abroad. Omni has been a significant accomplice, carrying out at least 30 confirmed third-country deportations missions of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people, as recently June 16th, when they took 12 non-Sierra Leoneans to Sierra Leone and 8 non-Equatoguineans to Equatorial Guinea, which is one the most corrupt countries on the planet, where both citizens and noncitizens have in the past been tortured and disappeared.

I also included in your packets stories about two women, Adriana Zapata and Rabbiatu Kuyateh.

Ms. Zapata came to the US as a legal asylum-seeker from Colombia, where she'd been sexually tortured by the national police. On April 16, she was put on an Omni plane with two dozen other South Americans and flown to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Adriana and the others were sent to a cockroach-infested motel by the airport and told they had go back to their countries of origin, even though all of them had won protections in US courts from deportation due to harms they faced in those countries. Ms. Zapata has diabetes and other complex medical conditions that required care. Within a day or two, the Congolese government told the US they didn't have the ability to care for her. Trump's State Department ignored them. Then a federal judge ordered Ms. Zapata be returned to the US. Trump's DOJ said, "Sorry. We can't take her back, there's an Ebola outbreak there. So it's not safe." She's still there, along with others. Her lawyer told the Guardian, “She's not doing well and does worry that she's going to die." 

Ms. Kuyateh is a nurse and a grandmother, and she lived in Maryland for more than 30 years. She'd won legal protections in federal court barring deportation to her native Sierra Leone, because of she'd been a victim of torture. No criminal record, but ICE didn't care. They snatched her up and put her on an Omni plane to Ghana, a country she'd never been to, last November.

She told Reuters on the flight the guards put a man in the WRAP and put him upside down on the floor, for 16 hours. Then they threatened her and everyone else on the plane that if they didn't behave, they were gonna get the WRAP, too. I talked to a flight attendant on that flight. They said the man was screaming, "I'm already a dead man! I'm already a dead man!" over and over.

In Ghana, Rabbiatu was imprisoned in a hotel for a few days, and then beaten and forced into a van and taken back to Sierra Leone. She fled to a neighboring country, and has been in hiding for the last eight months. Her son, her grandkids, and her parents, all American citizens, now live in the house Rabbiatu owns but can't go home to.

Omni under Stonepeak has also done at least four deportations to Mauritania, sending asylum-seekers back into the racialized chattel slavery that still exists there. 

Here are some incidents I have heard about but have not been able to prove. I have asked Omni and Stonepeak about them, they have a tendency to not reply to me.

One Omni flight attendant told me that on an ICE flight to Colombia on September 24, an immigrant may have killed himself, using medication given to him by the guards. ICE gives people a week's worth of their meds as they get off the plane when they're being deported, but the guards on this flight handed out the meds while the plane was descending into Bogota, and as soon as no one was looking, he took all of them. This flight attendant told me a flight medic started to panic, telling the ICE agents, we have to get him off the plane and into an ambulance as soon as possible or he's going to die. But ICE guys and the guards, they didn't seem that concerned, they slow-walked it, they kept doing their paperwork. And later, on the next flight to Brazil, the flight medic was just sitting there, in shock, going, "There's no way that guy lived." Let me be clear, I do not know if this is true. I haven't been able prove it. Stonepeak and Omni and ICE have not responded to requests for comment. They probably know if it's true.

All three of the Omni flight attendants I talked to had heard about another flight to Colombia, where immigrant passengers refused to get off the plane. So they were tear-gassed inside the plane, to get them to come out. Again, I don't know if this is true, but everyone at the company has heard it. And so apparently have members of this council. They asked about it at the Finance Committee meeting on June 25, and I want to be clear that they didn’t learn about that from me. They have heard that from somewhere else, that’s how widespread this story is. 

And that’s the point there. Omni’s reputation was already bad. Under Stonepeak’s ownership, it has gotten much, much worse. And the poor reputation is well-deserved. Mr. Wyper told the council they want to sell Omni, but provided evidence of that. And frankly, even if they do, that won’t get stink off of them, or the profits from that cruelty out of their coffers. 

So on one side, you have mountains of flight data, dozens of stories from major outlets, stories from former passengers and former employees who all say the same thing. On the other, you have a company that wants to profit off of your meters saying none that is true but providing no evidence.

Now, from what I hear, Chicago Parking Meters LLC hasn't been great to deal with under its current owners. I would like to suggest that a company that is willing to either lie or look the other way in the face of such cruelty is probably not going to do a much better job as the owners.

Thank you for letting me speak today, I welcome your questions.

Thank you for reading. I am a former Washington Post staff writer, and as far as I know, I’m the only journalist in America covering ICE flights full time. I am committed to keeping this reporting non-paywalled, but if you are able, please sign up for a paid subscription or send me a one-time tip, so I can continue this important work. –Gillian