A UVA Athletics spokesperson insisted to me last week that the department had “never used” Global Crossing Airlines, a Miami-based charter company that operates detention and deportation flights for ICE and also ferries basketball teams to and from the NCAA Tournament.
Turns out, UVA Athletics has indeed used Global Crossing, which markets itself as GlobalX Airlines, to fly its student-athletes to and from games.
ICYMI
GlobalX, I found out today, contracted with UVA Athletics for a series of charter flights for the UVA Football team in 2023.
I learned this through a Freedom of Information Act request with the University of Virginia, which had its FOIA office charge me $116 for “collection” and “review and redactions” of two documents, each two pages, with no obvious redactions.
It was money well spent.
Details
Now, neither of the contracts produced to me on Tuesday by the FOIA office at UVA included details of how much UVA Athletics was to pay for the flights, which were for the football program’s road trips to:
- Nashville, for the Sept. 2, 2023, game with Tennessee.
- Boston, for the Sept. 30, 2023, game at Boston College.
- Miami, for the Oct. 28, 2023, game at Miami.
- Louisville, for the Nov. 9, 2023, game with Louisville.
GlobalX flew the UVA Football program to and from each site for each of those four football weekends.
That’s all I know about the contractual relationship between UVA Athletics and GlobalX Airlines.
Again, no details on how much UVA Athletics had to pay.
Background: How I was made aware of GlobalX Airlines
Global X Airlines was brought to my attention by Arsenal PAC, which, last week, launched a “Don’t Fly with ICE” public awareness campaign to bring attention to the ties between GlobalX Airlines and the NCAA, which contracts with the charter company to provide flights for teams competing in the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournaments.
When I first reported on the story last week, my research indicated to me that GlobalX had started flying deportation flights for ICE in 2024, which is when the company announced that it had signed a five-year contract with ICE Air paying it $65 million a year to fly its deportation routes.
Subsequent research indicates that GlobalX actually began its relationship with ICE in September 2023, which coincides with the timing of the flights that the company provided for UVA Athletics to fly the UVA Football team for the four games in the 2023 season.
Arsenal PAC had indicated to us that UVA Athletics was among the athletics departments in D1 that have used GlobalX for charter flights.
When I reached out to UVA Athletics as part of my fact-checking on the story, the first response was a vague “no, we do not directly contract with GlobalX.”
I pressed the matter, because that response seemed parsed, and got back a second response clarifying more forcefully that “we have never used GlobaIX Airlines. UVA has contracted with multiple carriers, including Delta, Breeze, Republic and SkyWest, to name a few.”
So, I reported that.
As I awaited the initial response, I filed a FOIA request with the University, because I assumed that UVA Athletics would offer me a “no comment,” because UVA Athletics answers a lot of my more difficult questions with a “no comment.”
I’d actually intended to rescind the request after getting the forceful “we have never used GlobalX Airlines” second response, just to save the extra workload on the FOIA office staff.
What was I thinking, wanting to be the nice guy?
Somebody over there typed up, with a straight face, that estimate for $116 that would go to pay somebody to do a database search for “GlobalX Airlines” that might have taken 45 seconds, and then do a cursory review of two two-page documents that might have required five minutes.
When I got the estimate for that work by email last night, I was under the impression that UVA really didn’t want me to be able to report that the athletics department used the favored charter company of ICE to fly the football team around back in 2023.
I’ll make a lot more than $116 out of this story, so.
And then there’s what my constitutional law professor referred to as psychic income.
Reporters who file public-records requests on the regular dream of the day when they get their hands on a document that contradicts something they were told on the record.
Today is that day.
It might not be the biggest deal in the world right now, with all of the nonsense being perpetrated in our names by the various powers-that-be, but, here’s the lesson for all involved in this one:
When Augusta Free Press asks a question, we expect the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, as the response.
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Chris Graham
