Gil Dezer and Donald Trump Jr pose at Mansion Nightclub in December 2007 in Miami Beach, Florida. Photo by Gustavo Caballero/Getty Images
A private jet owned by an Israeli-American billionaire family with close ties to President Donald Trump appears to have been used to fly 10 immigrants to a brutal prison in the tiny African kingdom of Eswatini, according to flight data.
The Gulfstream IV jet was operated by Journey Aviation, a Miami-based charter company that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has previously used to carry out its third-country “deportations” to African countries, but it is owned by Michael Dezer and his family via a shell company. The wealthy often lease their private jets to charter companies part-time to qualify for a huge tax break that Trump signed into law in his first term.
The Dezers helped spearhead the concept of “Trump-branded” properties, netting billions on luxury condo sales to a largely foreign clientele via shell companies and offshore accounts, according to The Nation. It is perhaps fitting then that their private jet is being used to obscure from public view the Trump administration’s secret deals to send immigrants to foreign prisons.