On Friday, Bloomberg News published a story about the Department of Homeland Security’s seven Boeing 737s and two Gulfstream 650s with the headline “DHS wants to create its own round-the-clock deportation airline.” The Bloomberg story repeats DHS’s claim that owning its own fleet will keep costs down.

The story doesn’t mention that ICE currently charters 18 to 30 aircraft every day, so even if all of their new planes are operating at capacity, they won’t be able to replace chartered planes entirely.

The truth is that these planes were purchased in a rush, and have been sitting around in hangars collecting dust since they were purchased. DHS have been trying to go on a hiring spree since at least February. Their help wanted page is still up, looking to hire for every kind of worker an airline needs. After frantically buying planes that haven’t moved for months, DHS has likely burned through hundreds of millions of dollars, and they’re unable to even hire or retain pilots and flight attendants, many of whom are quitting in disgust.

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action.)