Portugal's World Cup squad flew on an ICE deportation plane — and nobody knew
Portugal's national team travelled to Dallas at the 2026 World Cup on a GlobalX aircraft regularly used for ICE deportation flights, including the removal of Venezuelans to El Salvador's mega-prison.
On the eve of the final, the 2026 World Cup has one more uncomfortable story — and this one lands close to home. Portugal’s squad flew to Dallas on 4 July, for the match against Spain, aboard an aircraft belonging to Global Crossing Airlines, better known as GlobalX: a charter company that spends much of its time flying deportation missions for ICE, the US immigration enforcement agency.
How do we know Portugal’s plane was used for deportations?
Because of the registration number, visible in videos of the trip itself. The investigation started with footage showing the Airbus’s tail number, and the aircraft’s flight logs show it performed immigrant-removal flights the day before and the day after it carried the Portuguese delegation. This wasn’t a plane that used to do deportations — it was in active service, with Portugal’s players slotted in between.
The aircraft’s record is heavy reading. In March 2025 it was involved in sending more than two hundred Venezuelans to the Cecot mega-prison in El Salvador, an operation that went ahead despite a court order to turn back. Since May 2023, the same plane has logged over 1,580 removal flights. People who were transported on those flights describe being shackled hand and foot, with no notice to families and no idea of their destination.
Did FIFA know what plane it put Portugal on?
Team charters at the tournament are arranged through the organisers, and that is where the controversy bites: at a World Cup held in the United States during a mass-deportation campaign, contracting an ICE-linked carrier to move teams was, at the very least, avoidable. Portugal wasn’t alone either — France’s squad also used flights from the same operator during the tournament. The contrast writes itself: the same World Cup that locked fans out over visas and bonds flew its players on aircraft from the deportation machine.
There is no indication the Portuguese delegation knew the aircraft’s history — the official travel and match records live on FIFA’s site, and none of them mentions the plane’s other life, naturally. The image lingers: at the World Cup of box-office records, even the team transport carries stories nobody asked for.
By Vasco Almada
Image: Acroterion / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
