Editor’s note: This is a static version of the interactive story found at this link.
Part 1: A struggling regional carrier
The legacy network
Air Wisconsin Airlines has not been spared by the nationwide decline of regional air service. The 60-year-old carrier laid off hundreds of employees in Appleton and Milwaukee last year after terminating a contract to provide aircraft, crews and services to American Airlines in January 2025. The airline’s planned pivot to charter service and federally subsidized connections to underserved airports didn’t pan out, prompting another round of layoffs by the spring.
But the company’s troubles didn’t entirely ground its fleet. Flight tracking data indicate that Air Wisconsin continued to provide regional air service through the end of 2025, primarily connecting its Wisconsin hubs to mid-sized Midwestern airports as it had for decades.
The sale
In January, Harbor Diversified Inc., the Appleton-based parent company of Air Wisconsin, sold the company’s operations and 13 of its jets to CSI Aviation, a New Mexico-based air charter company and longtime federal contractor owned by former New Mexico Republican Party chair Allen Weh.
Air Wisconsin sent recall notices to the company’s furloughed flight attendants after the sale to CSI Aviation, and the Association of Flight Attendants — the union representing the furloughed workers — negotiated an immediate raise for returning members. In a January press release announcing the recall notices, the union noted that only a third of the furloughed flight attendants opted to return.
Neither CSI nor Harbor Diversified responded to requests for comment.
CSI is central to the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown.
It has provided charter services for ICE since 2024, transporting detainees and deportees both directly and through subcontractors.
The company entered its current $1.5 billion contract with the Department of Homeland Security in November of last year.
Demand for private charters surged after 2010, when the Obama administration moved away from relying solely on the U.S. Marshals Service.
Air Wisconsin isn’t alone. Avelo Airlines began deportation flights last spring, but backed out last month following intense public backlash.
A transformed network
CSI’s acquisition of Air Wisconsin transformed the airline’s flight patterns within a matter of weeks. The airline’s website no longer lists passenger routes, but flight data collected between Jan. 9 and mid-February indicates that the airline has largely ceded its role as a Midwestern regional carrier.
Instead, the airline increasingly looks south: Destinations in Louisiana and Texas replaced the mid-sized Midwestern airports that were, until recently, the airline’s most frequent destinations.
Flight data indicates Air Wisconsin planes made at least 125 trips in January 2026, up from roughly 60 in December 2025. Thicker lines on the map indicate more frequent routes.
Part 2: Air ICE
Many of Air Wisconsin’s new destinations are within easy reach of ICE detention facilities in Texas and Louisiana, including some of the agency’s largest.
The Minnesota operation
Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport is among the busiest in the country, but Air Wisconsin rarely provided service to the Twin Cities in the final months of 2025.
That changed in January, just weeks after the Trump administration dispatched thousands of federal agents to Minnesota for an immigration enforcement offensive dubbed Operation Metro Surge.
Hundreds of immigrants detained in the operation have since departed the airport in shackles, loaded onto charter flights bound for ICE detention facilities farther south.
Alexandria
The modest airport in Alexandria, Louisiana, is now the epicenter of ICE’s deportation flight operations. Air Wisconsin has flown to or from Alexandria at least 30 times since the airline’s acquisition by CSI, on par with the airline’s service to Madison and outpacing service to Appleton, home to the airline’s corporate headquarters.
The GEO Group, an international private prison operator, runs an ICE detention facility on the airport’s tarmac. A dozen other ICE facilities sit within easy reach. Among them is the Adams County Correctional Center in Natchez, Mississippi, where Delvin Francisco Rodriguez, a 39-year-old Nicaraguan national, died in custody on Dec. 14, 2025. ICE acknowledged the incident in a press release four days later, though the agency did not specify the cause of Rodriguez’s death.
El Paso
Camp East Montana, ICE’s largest detention facility, sits just east of El Paso International Airport. Air Wisconsin flights took off from or landed in El Paso at least 32 times in January and early February, second only to Milwaukee’s Mitchell International Airport.
The camp drew national attention in early January after Geraldo Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old Cuban national, died by asphyxiation after guards pinned him to the floor of a cell. The El Paso County Medical Examiner’s Office later ruled the death a homicide.
Lunas Campos’ death came a month after Francisco Gaspar-Andres, a 48-year-old from Guatemala and detained at Camp East Montana, died in an El Paso hospital; ICE attributed Gaspar-Andres’ death to liver and kidney failure.
Another detainee, 36-year-old Victor Manuel Diaz of Nicaragua, died at the camp on Jan. 14 in what ICE described as a “presumed suicide” — an explanation his family questions. ICE agents detained Diaz in Minneapolis only days before his death.
Back at home
Air Wisconsin hasn’t entirely withdrawn from its home state hubs. Many of the airline’s remaining pilots, flight attendants and ground crew are still Wisconsin-based, and Milwaukee remains the airline’s primary hub.
The airline is now hiring for more than a dozen Wisconsin-based positions — including legal counsel.
About the data
Wisconsin Watch used FlightAware AeroAPI data (Sept 2025 – Feb 2026) to reconstruct patterns before and after the Jan. 9 sale to CSI Aviation.
Hubs on these maps represent the 10 airports most frequently used. While the routes align with ICE operations, the data does not confirm if specific flights carried detainees.
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