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At Wednesday's protest at Tweed.
“Don’t let your vacations fund deportations!”
“Boycott Avelo!”
“Shame on Avelo!”
Those were some of the chants that could be heard near Tweed New Haven Airport Wednesday evening as approximately 60 protesters rallied in opposition to Avelo Airlines’ newly announced contract with the Trump administration to operate deportation flights out of Arizona.
The protest was organized the night before by representatives from Unidad Latina en Acción (ULA), Connecticut Climate Crisis Mobilization (C3M), and Connecticut Shoreline Indivisible (CTSI). Protesters stood on Burr Street on either side of the entrance to the Tweed parking lot.
The protest marked just the latest example of grassroots and official condemnation of the budget airline, alongside rebukes from Mayor Justin Elicker, State Sen. President Martin Looney, state Attorney General William Tong, and an online boycott campaign that has garnered more than 19,400 signatures (at last check). State lawmakers in Hartford also took steps this week to limit Avelo’s cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
“We cannot allow this to happen,” said John Lugo, co-founder of ULA, at Wednesday’s protest. “Avelo profits on the suffering of our community.”
He called on Avelo to cancel their contract with Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and on local and state officials to prevent Avelo from operating out of Tweed and Bradley if they do not. Lugo noted that the Trump administration’s policies are boosting turnout to events like this one: “People are so upset,” he said. “If I tried to organize something like this a year ago, nobody would have come.”
Lugo also emphasized the city’s responsibility to its immigrant population. “Elicker should be here saying he is not happy with this company that he has been doing so much for,” Lugo said.
Loretta, a protest attendee who declined to be identified by her full name, told the Independent that “Avelo used to be one of [her] favorite airlines,” but that she would no longer be flying with them. “I’d get into a plane and wonder, did a deportee sit here in shackles?” Loretta said she’d encourage people to boycott Avelo with a stark warning: “If it can happen to immigrants, it can happen to any of us. I know it’s a cliché, but it’s true.”
“There’s nothing to stop Avelo from deporting people from New Haven,” said Shelly Altman, from Jewish Voices for Peace. Avelo has currently said that they will operate DHS flights from Mesa, Arizona. Altman encouraged everyone to “get educated on what Avelo is doing. There are New Haveners who are at extreme risk.”
Not everyone’s anti-Avelo sentiment, however, was rooted in the DHS contract. Gloria Bellacicco, an East Shore resident, noted the ironic situation that state Democrats find themselves in: “Avelo really ruined the neighborhood [when they came to Tweed in 2021], and now they’re going against everything Elicker and the Dems stand for.” Bellacicco underlined her long-standing opposition to Avelo: “My house shakes every time a plane takes off.”
A spokesperson for Avelo told the Independent via email, “We acknowledge the weight of these concerns and have received the feedback from the community. We will be discussing these concerns with Connecticut leaders.”
In public statements, Avelo Airlines CEO Andrew Levy has defended the deportation-flight contract as providing Avelo with some protection from “fluctuating fuel prices” and other “macroeconomic factors,” all in service of allowing the company to “grow our core business, which is scheduled passenger travel.”
An internal-company email Levy sent out on April 3 justified the deportation-flight contract as helping offset Avelo’s growing financial troubles at Tweed amid a steep increase in passenger-travel competition.
In a comment provided to the Independent for this article, a Tweed spokesperson said, “Avelo’s claims are both bizarre and untrue. The success and popularity of Tweed over the past year are well-documented: the Southern Connecticut region has fueled the growth of the fastest-expanding airport in the country. In fact, it’s clear that HVN’s exceptional performance has helped power Avelo’s national expansion, as they have since expanded into new or slower-performing markets, all while Tweed continues to shatter previous records.”