Treasurer’s office to discuss investment firm’s connection with ICE flights

By Anna Heqi­mi and Kar­la Perez
UConn Jour­nal­ism
Octo­ber 27, 2025

The Con­necti­cut Treasurer’s office is sched­uled to meet this week with one of its invest­ment funds, Glob­al Infra­struc­ture Part­ners (GIP), to dis­cuss its involve­ment in depor­ta­tion flights run by fed­er­al Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment.

GIP has received invest­ments of approx­i­mate­ly $400 mil­lion from the state’s pen­sion fund over the past six years.

One of GIP’s funds is part own­er of Sig­na­ture Avi­a­tion, a fixed-base oper­a­tor (FBO) which sup­ports pri­vate char­ter flights – includ­ing those run by ICE — pro­vid­ing avi­a­tion ser­vices such as board­ing stairs, fuel and air­craft main­te­nance.

Advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion Ground ICE alleged in a let­ter to the Treasurer’s office that the work “includes func­tion­ing as the pri­ma­ry fuel sup­pli­er for ICE flights orig­i­nat­ing from Hanscom Field in Bed­ford, MA and at Newark Air­port in NJ – the two air­ports through which detainees from Con­necti­cut most com­mon­ly pass.”

Ground ICE is urg­ing state offi­cials to pres­sure Sig­na­ture to recon­sid­er its work with depor­ta­tion flights.

The Office of the State Trea­sur­er “[does] not con­trol the man­age­ment of spe­cif­ic invest­ments with­in [GIP’s] port­fo­lio,” Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Direc­tor Brett Cody wrote in an email to CT Com­mu­ni­ty News. How­ev­er, he con­firmed that pen­sion fund offi­cials are sched­uled to meet Tues­day with GIP rep­re­sen­ta­tives to dis­cuss the mat­ter.

Invest­ment his­to­ry

In 2019, the Con­necti­cut Retire­ment Plans and Trust Funds (CRPTF), under then-State Trea­sur­er Shawn Wood­en, com­mit­ted $200 mil­lion to GIP 4, admin­is­tered by Glob­al Infra­struc­ture Part­ners, approx­i­mate­ly 2.9% of the com­mit­ments to the $7 bil­lion fund. In 2023, cur­rent Trea­sur­er Erick Rus­sell com­mit­ted a fur­ther $200 mil­lion to GIP 5, mak­ing up 0.8% of the $25 bil­lion fund.

GIP 4, in part­ner­ship with pri­vate equi­ty firm Black­stone and with Cas­cade Invest­ment, bought Sig­na­ture Avi­a­tion in 2021 in a $4.73 bil­lion deal.

Signature’s work with ICE pre­dates GIP’s own­er­ship. An ICE inter­nal doc­u­ment from 2019 shows Sig­na­ture Avi­a­tion list­ed as a des­ig­nat­ed FBO for ICE flights depart­ing from and arriv­ing in 12 major domes­tic air­ports in cities includ­ing Hous­ton, Atlanta and Chica­go. It is unclear whether ICE still uses the air­ports on this list; how­ev­er, report­ing from oth­er news media has doc­u­ment­ed Sig­na­ture sup­port­ing ICE flights at sev­er­al U.S. air­ports this year.

Sig­na­ture has a base at Bradley Inter­na­tion­al Air­port in Con­necti­cut, but ICE is not known to have used that facil­i­ty for depor­ta­tion flights.

Sig­na­ture Avi­a­tion and GIP did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to requests for com­ment.

Flight sup­port

The Office of the State Trea­sur­er usu­al­ly meets with GIP at least once every quar­ter, accord­ing to Cody. How­ev­er, he said that the Tues­day meet­ing “was added specif­i­cal­ly to dis­cuss and under­stand the flight sup­port.”

Rus­sell will not be present at the meet­ing, with the pen­sion fund man­age­ment team lead­ing it on his behalf.

Cody con­firmed that the office received a let­ter from Ground ICE, an advo­ca­cy group con­cerned with Sig­na­ture Aviation’s sup­port for ICE flights. The group encour­aged the office to meet with GIP to dis­cuss the invest­ment.

Accord­ing to the let­ter, when asked about their involve­ment with ICE, Sig­na­ture Avi­a­tion and GIP have pre­vi­ous­ly assert­ed that the com­pa­ny has no con­tract with ICE but that it fuels air­craft from many dif­fer­ent cus­tomers and has no way of dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing ICE flights from those not affil­i­at­ed with the agency.

Cody said that the pri­ma­ry goal of Tuesday’s meet­ing is to ver­i­fy some of the infor­ma­tion in the let­ter.

“We con­firmed to the advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion that we had already begun engage­ment with GIP on this sub­ject, and that engage­ment is ongo­ing,” Cody wrote.

Record flight num­bers

Ground ICE is not the only advo­ca­cy group close­ly mon­i­tor­ing this issue. Human Rights First, a non­par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion found­ed in 1978, tracks flights with its new­ly imple­ment­ed ICE Flight Mon­i­tor, which releas­es month­ly reports.

Accord­ing to the Sep­tem­ber 2025 report, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has con­duct­ed almost 9,000 ICE flights between Jan. 20 and Sept. 30., with approx­i­mate­ly 1,500 tak­ing place in Sep­tem­ber alone — the high­est month­ly total the mon­i­tor has record­ed in the last five years.

Accord­ing to Savi Arvey, the direc­tor for research and analy­sis and refugee pro­tec­tion for Human Rights First, there are cur­rent­ly no ICE flights tracked fly­ing into or out of Con­necti­cut.

Guadalupe Gon­za­lez is the flight mon­i­tor­ing coor­di­na­tor for La Resisten­cia, a grass­roots group based in Wash­ing­ton state, direct­ed by peo­ple who are per­son­al­ly affect­ed by immi­gra­tion enforce­ment.

“It’s our neigh­bors, it’s our close friends, it’s our fam­i­ly. I come from an immi­grant back­ground myself and it’s very much made me pas­sion­ate about what’s going on,” said Gon­za­lez.

Gon­za­lez said La Resisten­cia has been track­ing flights local­ly at King Coun­ty Inter­na­tion­al Air­port in Seat­tle since May 2023 and has expand­ed its track­ing efforts nation­al­ly as of May 2025. The orga­ni­za­tion tries to increase pub­lic aware­ness through flight mon­i­tor­ing releas­es such as their July 2025 report, which details Sig­na­ture Aviation’s coor­di­na­tion with air­port offi­cials over ICE flights using doc­u­ments obtained through Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act requests.

“We real­ly inten­si­fied our efforts because under the new Trump Admin­is­tra­tion, we’ve seen the vol­ume of flights triple,” he said.

Gon­za­lez said that with­out Sig­na­ture Avi­a­tion and oth­er FBOs being will­ing to work with ICE, depor­ta­tion flights wouldn’t be able to enter and leave air­ports.

“These pri­vate com­pa­nies have a big role, and it’s impor­tant that they’re addressed because they make it eas­i­er for ICE to escape cul­pa­bil­i­ty,” Gon­za­lez said. “But at the end of the day, we want to end deten­tion. We believe that undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants shouldn’t be sub­ject­ed to such treat­ment, and we’re just against this whole incar­cer­a­tion sys­tem that’s ulti­mate­ly being com­mit­ted for prof­it.”

Anna Heqi­mi and Kar­la Perez are jour­nal­ism majors at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut. This arti­cle was repub­lished by CT Com­mu­ni­ty News.