ICE error at WA airport puts India-bound man on wrong flight - to Alaska

Thousands of feet in the air on an Alaska Airlines flight that took off from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, the crew grappled with how to handle a strange situation.

Shortly before takeoff, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers had put a man on the wrong plane.

After months in detention at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Rakesh Rakesh was supposed to be on an Alaska Airlines flight to New York City, where he would transfer for a flight to India. Instead, he was on a plane bound for Sitka, Alaska.

The previously unreported May 31 incident, which prompted the airline to review safety protocols and go over them with the Department of Homeland Security, suggests a surprising carelessness in the way ICE officers used special airfield access and their perceived authority as federal agents.

The established procedures for this passenger were not followed by ICE," said Alaska Airlines spokesperson Alexa Rudin in a statement. "Our gate agents were not notified that he would be boarding the flight."

Even when flight attendants informed ICE officers they had the wrong plane, the federal agents "directed our flight attendants to board him," Rudin said.

Immigration lawyer Larkin VanDerhoef said he has seen ICE make mistakes before: scheduling check-in appointments on days its offices were closed, failing to bring a detained man to a prearranged interview with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Yet the flight snafu reached a different level of "bumbling, for lack of a better word," he said.

ICE did not respond to requests for comment.

What happened after Rakesh landed in Sitka was also surprising. The captain and Alaska Airlines jumped in to help the man, who by this point was desperate to return to India. He eventually made it back, but not before spending 16 more days in detention.

Rakesh, now 25, grew up in a poor farming family, he has related in video interviews and texts from his home on the outskirts of Delhi. He came to the U.S. in the fall of 2024 hoping to find a job or perhaps set up an Indian food stall. He said he was tricked by an Indian "travel agent" who promised a direct flight to the U.S., but instead sent him on a tortuous journey through Central America and Mexico. He climbed a ladder to get over a wall at the U.S. border.

Border Patrol officers detained Rakesh almost immediately. He was soon transferred to ICE's large, jail-like facility in Tacoma.

"I was lost," he said in a recent interview, speaking through an interpreter.

Rakesh initially pursued asylum, but as the process stretched on over months, he decided to get out of detention - and the U.S. - as fast as he could by requesting "voluntary departure," which allows people who haven't been convicted of serious crimes to leave the country without a deportation on their record that could bar their return for 10 years.

An immigration judge granted Rakesh's request May 21, according to online case information maintained by the immigration court system.

Rakesh paid for his own flights on commercial airlines, as people granted voluntary departure often do. He would fly like anyone else, without an ICE escort or the handcuffs and shackles standard on the agency's chartered planes, but would be walked onboard by agency officers.

The officers taking Rakesh to his flight didn't go through the terminal gate, like most passengers. They brought him up a stairway from the airfield leading to the part of the jet bridge closest to the plane, where strollers and other baggage checked at the last minute are often left, according to Rudin.

ICE officers, like other federal agents, are eligible for badges allowing them to access the airfield with people in their custody, said Port of Seattle spokesperson Perry Cooper.

Once on the jet bridge, the officers should have checked in with an airline agent before stepping onto the plane, according to procedures. At that point, they would have learned the plane they wanted, to New York City, was parked adjacent to the one they were about to board.

Still, flight attendants shortly filled them in, Rudin said. Why the officers pushed on is unclear.

"This was a non-standard interaction between law enforcement and our teams, and we are evaluating how to support our crews and implement policy that meets these types of situations," Rudin said.

In February, Alaska Airlines introduced a "deportee checklist" packet to be given by airline staff to immigration officers putting unescorted individuals on a plane. The packet includes information about airline policies and a form asking for names of officers and the people being deported.

An airline bulletin making staff aware of the packet noted that flight attendants are not required to hold passports or tickets of people boarded by immigration officers, as crews are sometimes asked to do, or withhold such documents from those passengers.

After the Sitka flight took off, flight attendants alerted the captain, a decadeslong veteran of the airline who asked not to be identified for privacy reasons.

When the captain broke the news to Rakesh, the Indian man said he grew afraid. "I was told I was allowed to go back to India," he said. But here he was on a flight to the most remote part of the U.S.

The captain comforted him, Rakesh said, as a father would. "I believe he was sent to help me by God."

Once the plane arrived in Sitka around 10:30 p.m., the captain took Rakesh to the hotel where he was staying and booked his passenger an adjacent room. The pilot arranged for Rakesh to fly back to Seattle the next morning and helped him book connecting flights to New York City and India.

Rudin expressed appreciation for how the crew cared for Rakesh and called the captain "a true representation of our values of safety, kindness and doing the right thing."

The airline paid for Rakesh's hotel and meals in Sitka and covered the flight back to Seattle and rebooking to New York City.

But rather than let him complete his itinerary, ICE agents met Rakesh upon his return to Seattle and brought him back to the Tacoma detention center. "I pleaded desperately with the ICE officers, begging and weeping, to let me go home," Rakesh said by text. "They did not listen to me."

He said he went on a hunger strike for a few days after he returned to the detention center.

The captain kept in touch with Rakesh and visited him at the detention center. VanDerhoef, the immigration attorney, was in the waiting area when he heard the pilot explain to a front-desk official the mistaken flight and Rakesh being redetained.

"This is crazy," VanDerhoef said he thought, prompting him to hand the captain his card.

But in a way, Rakesh's predicament was familiar to the lawyer.

The Trump administration says it wants to carry out as many deportations as it can as quickly as possible, the attorney noted. "Yet, time and time again," he said, ICE officers "seem to be either dragging their feet or not efficiently trying to remove people." Even those who want nothing more than to leave the U.S., he added, are sometimes left languishing at the detention center for months.

Russian national Yury Saaryan, for instance, first told ICE he wanted to go back to his birth country in August. He's been detained ever since at ICE's Tacoma facility.

ICE, in a previous statement, said delays can be caused by logistics like flight scheduling and procuring travel documents, issued by foreign countries to verify a person's identity and right to enter a country if valid passports are unavailable.

Neither was an issue in Rakesh's case. VanDerhoef, who ended up advocating for Rakesh pro bono, speculated ICE may have refused to let the Indian man take his rebooked flights from Seattle to New York City because arrangements hadn't been made to have officers meet him at John F. Kennedy International Airport and walk him to the plane to India.

Even so, VanDerhoef said, "You mean to tell me there's not an ICE officer at JFK at all times?"

ICE resolved Rakesh's case relatively quickly compared with other cases. Almost two weeks after Rakesh was redetained, VanDerhoef emailed ICE to ask about plans for the man's departure. An officer emailed back that a flight had been scheduled for June 17.

"We are facilitating all aspects of his travel, the officer wrote.

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This story was originally published April 23, 2026 at 4:59 PM.