Deportation Flights Increase in San Diego Under Trump Administration

Here are the morning’s top stories on Thursday, April 16, 2026

• One byproduct of the Trump Administration’s mass deportation campaign is a big increase in the number of deportation flights. More and more of those flights are coming from Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego.
• California State Senator Scott Weiner and fire survivors are pushing for a bill that would allow the state attorney general to seek damages from oil companies for their role in causing climate-disasters like fires and floods. The goal is to help blunt rising insurance costs. 
• A California attorney who aided President Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election can no longer practice law in the state. John Eastman was disbarred by the California Supreme Court on Wednesday.

Deportation flights from San Diego have spiked since Trump took office

The Trump administration has turned San Diego into a deportation hub by using military and civilian airports for flights, according to data from a nonprofit tracking flights throughout the country.

Human Rights First documented nearly 120 deportation flights out of San Diego International Airport and Marine Corps Air Station Miramar last year. That’s a massive increase from 2024, when there was not a single deportation flight out of San Diego. “The scale has just dramatically picked up from the past year,” said Savi Avery, who leads the nonprofit’s refugee and immigrant rights research program and runs the (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) ICE Flight Monitor program.

Historically, San Diego has not been a deportation flight hub. Deportations typically involved federal agents walking Mexican nationals to the south side of the border. Deportees from other countries have historically been flown to other U.S. cities and deported from there.

ICE outsources most of the flights to private carriers. In San Diego, most are handled by Global X and Eastern Air Express. ICE began using San Diego International Airport for deportation flights in April 2025, according to the data from Human Rights First. Deportation flights out of MCAS Miramar began in July. Avery said this is an example of the Trump administration using the country’s military infrastructure to advance his mass deportation campaign.

In a statement, MCAS Miramar confirmed that its airport acts as a location for civilian, military and federal flights, but did not provide any other specifics regarding the ICE flights. It’s not unusual for other government agencies and contractors to use the air station. Air Force One, the U.S. presidential plane, has landed at Miramar several times.

Human Rights First began tracking ICE flights in July 2025. Previously, the work was done by Tom Cartwright, a retired JP Morgan executive from Ohio. Avery said their tracking data is useful to lawyers and relatives of people detained by ICE. “We definitely get outreach from lawyers who might be concerned that the administration has flown someone in violation of a court order and need to stop a flight from taking off,” she said.

Hearing held on bill to hold fossil fuel companies responsible for climate-related disasters

State Senator Scott Weiner and fire survivors are pushing for a bill that would allow the state attorney general to seek damages from oil companies for their role in causing climate-disasters like fires and floods. The goal is to help blunt rising insurance costs.

“With the cost of home insurance shooting through the roof and more and more families getting rejected by private insurers, we have to do everything we can to stabilize the market and boost affordability,” said Senator Wiener. “The Affordable Insurance and Recovery Act takes an innovative approach to this problem by shifting the cost of wildfires and other climate-driven disasters from the survivors who are suffering to the fossil fuel giants most responsible. No one should be be pushed out of their home by insurance costs, and the AIR Act will take an important step to ensuring they won’t be.”

Gayle Ali and her husband Rasheed are 30-year residents of Altadena. They were celebrating their wedding anniversary when the Eaton Fire destroyed their house. She said she’s learned since the fire that industry leaders knew in the 80s their products would cause catastrophes, like the fire that wiped out the family’s home, photos, music studio. “We’re really hurting. To the oil corporations, we could use your help. We support SB 982 because it simply asks oil corporations to also pay their fair share,” she said during a recent hearing in Sacramento.

SB 982 is a streamlined version of a bill that did not pass last year. That would have allowed citizens to sue fossil fuel companies directly. This version allows only the state attorney general to seek damages. Opponents say the bill would raise gas prices and kill jobs.

California attorney who tried to help overturn 2020 election loses law license

A California attorney who aided President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results has lost his license to practice in the state.

The California Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered John Eastman disbarred and his name stricken from the state roll of attorneys. It caps a yearslong effort by the state bar to strip Eastman of his law license after he developed a legal strategy to have then-Vice President Mike Pence interfere with the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory.

A judge for the State Bar Court of California in 2024 recommended that he lose his California law license. Eastman argued he was being punished for simply giving legal advice. George Cardona, chief trial counsel for the State Bar of California, said Wednesday’s decision follows clear evidence that Eastman “advanced false claims about the 2020 presidential election to mislead courts, public officials, and the American public.”

Eastman’s attorney, Randall Miller, said the decision “raises pivotal constitutional concerns” and that they plan to seek review in the U.S. Supreme Court. The ruling, he said in a statement, “departs from long-standing United States Supreme Court precedent protecting First Amendment rights, especially in the attorney discipline context.”

Eastman was a close adviser to Trump in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He wrote a memo laying out a plan for Pence to reject legitimate electoral votes for Biden while presiding over the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6 in order to keep Trump in the White House.