A New England Patriots plane made a trip to and from Guantánamo Bay on Monday, public flight tracking data shows.
The Patriots plane, donning the team colors and logo, took off from Fort Worth, Texas, and landed around Guantánamo at 10:49 central time, according to the flight tracking website ADS-B Exchange. It flew back to El Paso a few hours later.
The flight has drawn speculation as to why the team's plane took an offseason flight to the military base in Cuba, which the Trump administration is using as a detention center for deportees removed from the U.S. under heightened immigration arrests.
Anisha Chakrabarti, a spokesperson for Kraft Sports + Entertainment, the Patriots' parent company, told the Huffington Post and other media outlets the team's plane was not used for "any kind of deportation flight" and there were no "detainees" on board.
Neither of the Patriots' two Boeing planes have been used for that purpose under the team's current charter manager, Omni Air International, which has operated the planes since 2024, Chakrabarti said. It's unclear what the purpose of Monday's flight was.
The White House confirmed that information. Deputy press secretary Anna Kelly told Vanity Fair there is no contract with the Patriots to carry out deportations.
Omni Air, an Oklahoma-based company, operates the team's Boeing 767s to fly the team and make other chartered flights, including transporting U.S. troops internationally for the Department of Defense. Federal records show Omni Air has a $6.3 million contract with the department through September 2026. The military flights result in "no financial gain for the organization," Chakrabarti said in a statement to the Huffington Post and other media outlets. The Patriots' owner, Robert Kraft, has also used the planes for humanitarian missions.
In the statement, Chakrabarti said the Patriots "is not involved in, nor does it approve, sanction, or coordinate the uses of the aircraft when they are chartered for non-team purposes."
The contract arrangement between Omni Air and the Kraft Group is not public, WBUR reported.
The team's plane was used for deportation flights in 2022, when Joe Biden was president, according to the Center for Human Rights at the University of Washington. It flew three deportation flights to Honduras under a different charter operator, per the center, which studied the rising use of sports planes for deportations.
Since Donald Trump took office in January, 85% of deportation flights have been on charter plans as of March 21, ProPublica reported.
Avelo Airlines, one of the two airlines that serves Tweed New Haven Regional Airport, has contracted with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to fly deportation flights. People rallied outside Tweed in April to protest Avelo Airlines and thousands pledged to boycott the airline in a New Haven-organized online petition.
Josh Kraft, a son of Robert Kraft, is currently running for mayor of Boston.
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