Immigration Expert Todd Bensman Debunks Outrage Over Shackled Migrants on Deportation Flights

Todd Bensman, a senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, said the shackling of migrants for deportation flights is a necessary safety measure to protect U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and pilots.

Bensman pointed to incidents throughout the Biden administration which saw migrants revolt against deportation efforts – including a September 2021 incident in which Haitian migrants rioted and assaulted ICE agents while on a mid-air deportation flight to Port-au-Prince – for why migrants are shackled for deportation flights.

“There’s a reason why we do this and a really damn good reason why we do it. You just have to go back to the Del Rio Haitian Migrant Camp crisis of 2021, where you had 15,000 Haitians under the bridge,” Bensman explained on Monday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.

“It was posing a major political threat to the Biden administration for the midterm campaign season that was just getting underway. They had all this international media attention. They had to shut that thing down fast, and the way they did it was they went Trump – they put a bunch of deportation flights together and put the Haitians on board unrestrained, and they rioted at 40,000 feet on that plane trying to get into the pilot’s cabin, attacking ICE,” Bensman.

Bensman pointed out that the Biden administration received no pushback after implementing the policy to shackle migrants while they were being deported after the incidents which saw migrants attacking ICE agents, bus drivers, and pilots administering the transportation.

“Nobody complained at all, really, about the Biden air deportations. That’s for one thing…That’s how impactful air deportations are. They work. They did it for their own political advantage; they couldn’t have this ever growing migrant camp under the Del Rio, Texas bridge all through the midterm election campaign season, so they did what they had to do. They went Trump. They just didn’t restrain those first ones when they should have restrained them,” Bensman said.

Bensman added that the shackling of migrants currently being deported is especially crucial given the backgrounds of a majority of the individuals captured by ICE since Trump took office.

“There’s a really good basis to do this activity to have them shackled, especially this particular category that they’re the worst first that they’re flying out. These are criminal aliens. These are exactly the ones that you must shackle for officer safety and for the safety of everybody on board. That’s just the way it is. That’s how the real world works,” Bensman said.

Watch the full interview:

– – –

Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.