A small group of activists has been gathering outside the chain link fence at Portsmouth International Airport since August. They carry binoculars, telescopes and handheld video recorders, watching the runway and recording what they see, as the reflected heat from the tarmac blurs the edges of tiny, shackled people walking from a transport van to the plane.
“We got detainees coming out,” an activist says, and starts counting. The activist asked to only be identified by her initial, A, as they fear the repeated threats from the Trump administration towards activists who record immigration enforcement officers.
Since July, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been using the airport at Pease to transport detainees across the country. It hasn’t said why or how many people are on these flights. ICE has not responded to multiple requests for comment from NHPR.
In this data void, a handful of activists are spending their free time counting the number of detainees boarding these flights, part of a wider effort to pressure local officials to stop the use of Pease as a deportation hub.
“Deportations have always been happening — but the fact that it's happening so close to home on such a great scale and that I can physically see what's happening,” A said. “It’s a combination of wanting to do the right thing and also being haunted by what I've been seeing here.”
Despite the increased attention, this is not the first time that ICE has used the airport.
There were three ICE flights from Pease in 2024 and two in February of this year. Those were all small-scale international deportation flights on jets that fit a maximum of 14 people.
But in July, ICE moved domestic flights from Hanscom Field in Massachusetts to Portsmouth.
These flights are bigger and are headed to cities in the U.S., most of them within an hour's drive of an ICE processing center.
This matches national trends, according to Savi Arvey, Director of Research and Analysis for Refugee Protection at Human Rights First. The nonprofit keeps tabs on where these flights are taking off and landing.
“As the Trump administration has escalated its mass deportation campaign over the past eight months, we’ve seen a sharp rise in domestic transfer flights conducted by ICE — both in New England and nationwide,” Arvey said. “These frequent transfers between detention centers and deportation staging facilities not only disorient individuals in custody, but also severely undermine their ability to access legal counsel and stay connected with their families.”
Even though it’s possible to keep track of arrivals and departures based on data available online, figuring out how many people are on the flights at Pease comes from volunteers like A.
She said that activists have recorded vans with tinted windows, and license plates from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, Pennsylvania, and the Department of Homeland Security.
A said that not a lot of people usually get off the flights, but anywhere between 10 and 50 detainees board. As of September 4, she said that her group of volunteers counted 389 people who boarded flights since the beginning of August.
Another strategy activists have been using is to ask the Pease Development Authority to stop these flights altogether, citing concerns with due process, in how detainees are being treated, and the Trump administration’s immigration policies as a whole.
“I'm 85 years old: I don't remember anything in my entire lifetime that is so upsetting in terms of government abuse of human beings,” said former U.S. Sen. Gordon Humphrey, an anti-Trump Republican who’s been showing up at Pease to watch the flights. “It's cruelty. It's outrageous. It's un-American. And everybody who is concerned should be out protesting.”
Members of the Pease Development Authority board, which manages Portsmouth International Airport, say they are sympathetic to these concerns. But Chairman Steve Duprey said there wasn’t much the PDA can do to undermine regulations set by the Federal Aviation Administration. (Duprey is also a member of NHPR’s Board of Directors, but has no influence or input into the newsroom's work.)
Duprey said not complying with FAA regulations would require the Pease Development Authority to pay back federal grants they received while redeveloping the former Air Force base and make the city of Portsmouth ineligible for future federal grants.
“It's sort of like a shotgun marriage — we can't get divorced,” he said. “Because we're a federal airport, we have to service any plane that is legally landing here that has the right tail numbers.”
He said the Pease Development Authority is still looking at its options — such as asking if the Department of Homeland Security would consider not using Pease and revisiting safety regulations on who is allowed on the tarmac.
This outcome is disappointing to residents like Sarah Cornell, who has been actively organizing protests on the I-95 exit near Pease. She said that her efforts are far from over, and she will continue to speak out at government meetings and connect with like-minded neighbors.
“We haven't really had any losses, but we haven't had a huge success,” she said. “We are doing the next right thing, and that's going to have to be good enough for a while.”
