Luxury jets for deportations: Kristi Noem's biggest grift yet - Daily Kos

Remember how weird it was that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem asked Congress for $50 million for a fancy new private jet before somehow being allowed to blow $170 million on two fancy new private jets?

Hear us out: What if she got nine instead?

Independent journalist Gillian Brockell, who has doggedly tracked deportation flights, traced many of the fly-by-night companies that have arisen to partake in the deportation industrial-complex’s slush fund. Only by doing that can you see just how many jets your tax dollars are buying.

One of these companies is Salus Worldwide Solutions, which is run by MAGA donor William Walters. Salus landed a nearly $1 billion contract for flights and “concierge services” for people who self-deport. Walters is also behind Daedalus Aviation, which got $140 million from DHS to buy six Boeing 737s for a deportation fleet.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem wears a fun costume as she speaks to the press near the Rio Grande River on Jan. 7. Then there’s Valkyrie Aviation Holdings Group. Per Brockell, that company just so happens to have offices one floor up from Daedalus and in the same building as Salus, and somehow slid a Gulfstream 650 over to DHS last week as well.

Perhaps even more disgusting than the vast amounts of money being slopped around here is the risible lie that these luxury planes will be used for deportation flights.

NBC News nabbed some interior pics of one of these luxury planes DHS is currently leasing. There are queen beds, showers, a kitchen, four huge TVs, and a bar. Somehow, we are supposed to believe that they will use it to ferry detainees.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is begging the Office of Management and Budget to let them buy this one outright for $70 million, according to NBC News. When asked how such a plane would be used for deportations, a DHS spokesperson offered this: “At least one of the bedrooms is currently being converted for seating to prepare the aircraft to meet the demands of its deportation mission set.”

One whole bedroom! On a plane that has a current passenger capacity of 18!

This lie crumbles when you learn that deportation flights contain upward of 100 people shackled at the wrists and ankles. Is the notion they’d put all 100 and additional crew in that one spare bedroom?

FBI Director Kash Patel, left, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem sit in a pink Cadillac made of LEGO blocks last November. The lie falls apart in spectacular fashion when you remember this is the same administration that has refused to provide medication to detainees and housed people in facilities with sewage bubbling up through drains. It’s the same administration that imprisons children in similarly horrifying conditions. And we are supposed to believe it is really planning on deporting detainees on a luxury jet?

What those luxury planes appear to be used for instead are weekly trips home for Noem, per Brockell. Of course, we can’t know exactly who flew 17 times in 18 weeks to Noem’s hometown, but it seems unlikely we are deporting immigrants to Watertown, South Dakota.

Noem might even be wasting more taxpayer money than FBI Director Kash Patel’s expensive plane antics, like when he flew to see the Winter Olympics and chug a beer with the U.S. men’s hockey team.

These expensive planes—some leased by DHS, some purchased by DHS, some purchased by private MAGA companies with DHS money—are the perfect example of Trump-era excess and grift. Our brutal overlords are flying around on the fanciest planes on our dime while funneling those dimes to rich backers. Your tax dollars are at work in the worst, stupidest, most wasteful ways.