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Palestinians arrested by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the United States are being deported to the occupied West Bank by private jets in coordination with Israeli authorities, according to a joint investigation by +972 Magazine and The Guardian.

According to the report, the deportation is part of a “secretive and politically sensitive operation” which began at the start of this year.

The report mentioned that eight Palestinian men were flown, their wrists and ankles shackled for the entirety of the ride from an ICE deportation centre in Arizona’s Phoenix on January 20. They arrived at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv after several fueling stops in Ireland, New Jersey and Bulgaria. The men were later stuffed in a vehicle with an armed Israeli police officer and dropped at a military checkpoint outside Ni’lin, a Palestinian town in the West Bank.

The deportation of these eight men was initially reported by Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which said the men are residents of West Bank towns and cities, including Bethlehem, Hebron, Bir Nabala, Al Ram, Ramun and Silwad.

Separately, the private jet used for their alleged deportation is owned by an Israeli-American property tycoon, who, according to the report, is a close business partner and a friend of US President Donald Trump. The business associate reportedly conducted an identical deportation journey on Monday, February 2. However, the passage’s details, such as the number of passengers and their identities, are not yet revealed.

Palestinians deported held in ICE facilities for weeks

Meanwhile, the deported members had held green cards allowing them to stay in the US legally with their wives, children and family members. Some Palestinians arrested by the enforcement were known to be publicly violent and had been detained for weeks on end in ICE facilities, with at least one held for over a year, the report said.

A passerby first noticed the release of the eight Palestinians at the Ni’lin checkpoint on January 21.

A university professor, living near the crossing, Mohammed Kanaan said, “At around  11 am, I saw a group of men walking toward my house wearing light grey pyjamas, like the ones worn by (Palestinian) prisoners in Israeli prisons.” These tracksuits allegedly came from the ICE.

“I was shocked to see them. The Israeli army does not usually release prisoners at this checkpoint,” he said. He recounted the ordeal and said he brought them to his house since they were cold, and later fed them.

“They were not wearing jackets or coats, and the weather was very cold and windy that day,” he said. “They stayed at my place for two hours, during which I fed them and they called their families who either came to pick them up or arranged transportation for them.”

Some of them were considered missing since their detention because it had been so long since they last contacted their family, Kanaan said.

“Their families were so happy to hear their voices. One mother started screaming and crying over the phone,” he said.

Palestinians’ deportation via Israel, a rare occurrence: Immigration attorney

The report further said that arranging deportations in occupied territory could be flagged as a violation of international law, adding that deportations of Palestinians through Israel have been an extraordinarily rare occurrence.

“Aside from the many irregularities with the deportation of eight Palestinians on a private jet and no due process, this transfer also violates the principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits the forcible return of individuals to a country where there are substantial grounds for believing that the person would be at risk of irreparable harm upon return, including persecution, torture, ill treatment or other serious human rights violations,” Gissou Nia, director of the Strategic Litigation Project at the Atlantic Council told the magazine.

She explained that the US is bound by international treaties that “explicitly prohibit this,” and it shows that the state has violated international law as they have sent Palestinian asylum seekers back to Israel, where they could possibly face persecution.

“The Israeli state’s role in transferring these individuals from Ben Gurion Airport to the West Bank also implicates them in this violation,” Nia said. She also noted that if the other countries, Bulgaria and Ireland, knew that a private jet carrying these individuals, then it also “raises questions as to the intermediary responsibility of those countries.”

An Israeli human rights lawyer said this arrangement could only be possible with “some kind of specific interest,” adding that it was an exceptional case because, except for VIPs, “not even humanitarian cases” could travel to the West Bank via the Israeli airport.

Haaretz reported that the deportations were ordered after an “unusual request from Washington to Israel,” which was approved by Israel’s Shin Bet security service.

Private jet had emblems of Dezer Development, an Israeli-American developer

The report revealed that the private jet had an emblem of a property company named Dezer Development, founded by Israeli-American Michael Dezer, now run by his son Gil Dezer.

The Dezers have reportedly been in business with Trump since the 2000s and have built six Trump-branded residential towers in Miami. Moreover, their documents show a donation of more than USD 1.3 million to his presidential campaign.

Human Rights First, an organisation that tracks deportation flights, stated that Dezer’s jet had made four such “removal flights” since October of last year to Guinea, Eswatini, Liberia and Kenya, countries in the African continent.

HRF’s director of research and analysis for refugee and immigrant rights, Savi Arvey said, “This private charter jet has been repeatedly used for ICE Air flights.”

“It is part of an opaque system of private aircraft facilitating this administration’s mass deportation campaign, which has blatantly disregarded due process, separated families, and operated without any accountability.”

Since US does not officially recognise Palestine as a state, there are grave inconsistencies in how ICE officials look at Palestinians’ country of origin and removal. Since many Palestinians arriving in the United States are identified as being from other Arab countries, most of these countries, especially Israel, reportedly refuse to accept them. Thus, these individuals are forced to sit in US immigration detention centres for longer periods than other immigrants.