Avelo Airlines, an ultra-low-cost carrier based in Houston, has agreed to operate deportation flights for the Department of Homeland Security out of Phoenix-Mesa Airport starting next month. The contract is unconventional for a commercial airline because the federal government relies mostly on private charter companies.

Andrew Levy, Avelo’s founder and chief executive, described the company’s decision to participate in the flights as financial. It has generated criticism from Democratic lawmakers, the largest flight attendants union and thousands of travelers who signed a Change.org petition to boycott the carrier.

...Avelo provided details of its “long-term charter program” in a statement to The Washington Post. The airline will use three Boeing 737-800s, which can seat up to 189 passengers, to transport people deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to facilities or staging grounds in the United States or to final destinations abroad.

...Human rights and immigrant advocates have denounced conditions for deportees on flights, as have the governments of Brazil and Colombia. More recently, the administration flew more than 200 Venezuelans to El Salvador, where they are being held in a notorious prison.

...The primary responsibility of flight attendants is to ensure the safety of passengers. According to the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, which represents workers at 20 airlines, including Avelo, the restrictive nature of deportation flights prohibits them from doing so.

“Having an entire flight of people handcuffed and shackled would hinder any evacuation and risk injury or death,” the union said in a statement to The Post. “It also impedes our ability to respond to a medical emergency, fire on board, decompression, etc. We cannot do our jobs in these conditions.”

According to the ICE Air Operations handbook, adult detainees will be restrained by handcuffs, waist chains and leg irons. Only the flight officer in charge or their assistant can remove the restraints.

The members urged Avelo to reconsider its deal with ICE.

...“If you and I are on a plane, we’re not even allowed to have our purses out when the plane is taking off because you have to be able to get off the flight so quickly if there’s an emergency,” said Angelina Snodgrass Godoy, the director of the UW Center for Human Rights. “Yet these folks are chained.”

Because of the steps involved in transporting deportees, Godoy said, the passengers may be constricted for hours or even an entire day. The shackles stymie mobility and can cause physical pain. She said she has observed flights where people struggle to walk up the stairs and complain of losing feeling in their hands. Using the lavatory is imaginably difficult.

“They’re not allowed to remove those shackles,” she said, “an impediment if you have to go to the bathroom.”