Flight Attendants On Flights With Separated Children Speak Out

Flight Attendants Are Speaking Up About Cruel Policy

Flight attendants are speaking up and sharing their heart-wrenching personal experiences of transporting children who’ve been separated from their parents at the border as a result of new policy recently put into place by the Trump Administration.

Airlines are now being faced with one of the most sensitive moral issues to test their internal policies and public relations in years.

Flight attendants seek answers from airline leadership

Airline employees are now being faced with making a decision to become “complicit” in what they believe to be acts of cruelty or to just say no.

Here’s a flight attendant’s recent message sent to American Airlines management: 

“Recently on a flight from Dallas to Miami, I had the displeasure of transporting eight young boys, estimated between the ages nine to fifteen, dressed in gray sweatsuits along with their escort – a cold hearted woman who scowled at our attempts to communicate with the frightened children. Of course they spoke no English, and my Spanish is limited, but we got the job done.

Their situation weighed on me the entire flight, playing multiple scenarios in my head, and it broke my heart. Knowing that I was transporting innocent children to their detention and possible deportation goes against every moral fiber in my body. To me, it felt like “justified” human trafficking, and indeed was one of the aformentioned scenarios. These children have committed no crime, nor have their family members by seeking a better life away from a troublesome and often dangerous lives in their homeland.

In the short time since, I have read multiple accounts from other crews that were similar in nature, if not worse than my own experience. While I know this is a sensitive subject, American Airlines’ values and emphasis on diversity give us an enormous platform on which to stand against this cruel, abhorrent, and abusive policy.

American Airlines is not a state-owned carrier, nor an extension of the United States government, which operates its own fleet of aircraft designated for this specific purpose. Commercial airlines and their
crews bare no responsibility to assist the current administration’s agenda, particularly when it goes against ones moral standing.

American Airlines has lent it’s voice to many causes, and could continue to do so if the company were to publicly denounce this policy of separating families by refusing transport, or providing advanced notice of ICE transportation as we do with adult inmates, and showing leniency to crew members who feel uncomfortable participating in flights where ICE officials/escorts and detainees are on board. I believe we could all do our jobs pridefully, while simultaneously sending the Trump administration and our lawmakers a message to do their jobs: Protect our sovereignty without forgetting what makes our nation the land of opportunity it is supposed to be, and without causing irreparable harm in the process.

Respectfully, I implore American Airlines to stand on the right side of history against the inhumane internment of children, and allow our employees to opt out of uncomfortable situations involving the transportation of minor detainees.”