Weekly Member Update - December 15, 2025

This past week saw us take our ongoing campaign against Avelo Airlines — the bargain-basement air carrier that profits by tearing families apart — from the streets outside Albany International Airport inside to the Chambers of the Albany County Legislature. Since Avelo first contracted with ICE to conduct deportation flights on behalf of ICE this past Spring, it has conducted more than 1700 flights on behalf of ICE. During the same time, we’ve been simultaneously working actively within the national anti-Avelo movement and demanding that Avelo be removed from Albany International. With some exceptions — the most notable being State Senator Patricia Fahy — our work against Avelo has not been matched by the efforts of our local elected officials, particularly those at the County level. Despite our hard work and advocacy, so-called Democratic leaders like County Executive Dan McCoy have been conspicuously silent on the issue of Avelo’s presence in our community and, to date, only a smattering of the 39-elected Albany County Legislators have joined in a statement condemning Avelo’s cruel complicity with ICE’s campaign of terror against immigrant communities throughout the nation.

Although the day-to-day operation of Albany International Airport is in the hands of the Albany County Airport Authority and the Authority’s staff, the Albany County Executive and Albany County Legislature are nonetheless vested with considerable influence over the Airport. First, under the Albany County Charter, McCoy is denominated the chief executive officer of County government, with broad plenary power over the supervision and conduct of County departments and agencies, and his de facto authority and influence over operations at Albany International Airport has been well-documented. The Albany County Charter also vests the County Legislature with the paramount policymaking power within Albany County and provides it with legislative oversight over County programs and administrative units. To that end, New York State law vests the County Legislature with the power to confirm (or not confirm) appointments to the Airport Authority Board, and the Majority Leader of the County Legislature — currently Guilderland Democrat Dennis Feeney — is personally responsible for appointing four of the seven Airport Authority Board members; County Executive McCoy gets to appoint the other three members of the Authority Board subject, again, to County Legislature confirmation.

It was the ongoing silence and inaction of our County elected officials, despite their considerable powers, which drew us to the County Legislature last Monday, where five members of our broader activist community — representing not just Indivisible Albany, but also Guilderland Indivisible, We Get Out the Resistance, Bethlehem Indivisible and Colonie Indivisible — directly addressed the County Legislature to reiterate the problem with Avelo, to call upon our elected County leaders to finally take action and to remind those leaders that, if they fail to act, we will find new leaders that will. If you were unable to attend the County Legislature’s proceedings last Monday, the full thing is available on You Tube with our speakers starting at approximately the 16:45 mark.

Our appearance at the County Legislature led to new reporting by CBS6 on the Avelo issue, including footage of our most recent protest action at Albany International in November. But the most notable aspect of the CBS6 reporting was the inclusion of remarkably ill-informed, pro-Avelo statements by a member of our County Legislature. Colonie Republican Paul Burgdorf (LD-23), the Deputy Minority Leader of the County Legislature, offered two arguments in favor of Avelo’s continued presence at Albany International; we will address each in turn.

First, Burgdorf — who claims to be a “frequent” Avelo user — put forward an economic argument, contending that Avelo’s bargain-basement prices encourage other carriers to keep their own prices low; "If you remove Avelo Airlines, there is no longer any competition between the airlines to better serve the Capital District community," Burgdorf hypothesized. Putting aside that there is no empirical support for the proposition that Avelo’s mere presence at Albany International has somehow broadly driven local air fares down since Avelo’s arrival in the Capital District in February 2024, Burgdorf’s theory ignores the plain fact that, where Albany International Airport is concerned, Avelo has no competitors. Simply put, Avelo only offers two destinations to Capital Region travelers, those being nonstop flights to-and-from Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina and to-and-from Concord-Padgett Regional Airport in the suburbs of Charlotte, North Carolina. As we’re sure that a frequent Avelo flier like Burgdorf must know, there are no other carriers at Albany International that offer direct flights to those two destinations. In fact, the “exclusive” nature of the direct flights that Avelo offers was the primary selling point of the airline’s arrival in Albany, with the Albany County Airport Authority specifically heralding Avelo as “the first and only airline offering nonstop service between New York and North Carolina’s state capitals.”

If Burgdorf’s first argument in favor of Avelo’s continuing operation in our community was nonsensical, his second argument was either gaslighting or borne of pure ignorance. According to Burgdorf, since the Trump Administration is doing nothing wrong in its far-reaching mass deportation campaign, there can also be nothing wrong with Avelo’s participation in that campaign; "Until somebody says that evicting or deporting illegal migrant criminals is illegal, that is certainly the legal authority of the United States," Burgdorf reasoned. Where do we even begin? We could start with the widely available statistics demonstrating that, contrary to Republican rhetoric about rounding up and deporting “the worst of the worst,” the reality is that the vast majority of detentions are happening to people with no criminal convictions. According to stats provided by ICE itself, as of mid-November 2025, nearly 75% of the 65,000+ individuals held in ICE detention had no criminal record and were instead detained due to noncriminal immigration violations. We also know that the Trump Administration is making a habit of rounding people up at immigration courthouses like 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, routinely detaining and imprisoning individuals who are, by definition, doing things the “right way” by showing up to their scheduled appointments at immigration court only to be torn from their families and whisked away to places unknown by ICE and Avelo. Minority Leader Burgdorf may also be surprised to learn that, not only are “migrant criminals” not the focus of Trump’s deportation efforts, the efforts themselves are hardly consistent with what he characterizes as “the legal authority of the United States.” Anyone with a social media account can see footage on a daily basis of ICE agents conducting indiscriminate and warrantless arrests, often unlawfully deploying chemical agents against the patriots who dare protest ICE activity. Hundreds of American citizens have been arrested by ICE, usually because of the color of their skin, and innumerable federal courts have enjoined ICE from deporting individuals in the absence of the Due Process protections guaranteed by the very Constitution that Minority Leader Burgdorf has sworn an oath to uphold.

We are understandably troubled that an elected local official like Paul Burgdorf could be so thoroughly misinformed about an issue of crucial local concern like ICE’s ongoing campaign of lawlessness and terror and Avelo Airlines’ participation in it. Fortunately for Minority Leader Burgdorf, however, we will be back in front of the County Legislature next Monday, December 22 to continue to sound the alarm. As was stated before the Legislature last week, we are not going anywhere anytime soon on the issue of Avelo Airlines and, judging by the comments of Paul Burgdorf, we clearly have a good deal of educational work ahead of us.

In closing, be reminded of our events calendar, which remains chock-full of events despite plummeting temperatures and the holiday seasons. Tonight, tune in to the Mobilization Launch Call for Deadline Hochul; we are a local sponsoring organization for the planned march in Albany on April 18, where thousands will come together to demand that Governor Hochul take immediate action against climate change, and you can hear all about it on tonight’s mobilization call. In addition, mark your calendar for January 6; we’re planning to celebrate Three Kings Day and the beginning of the 2026 Legislative Session with a Vigil for Immigrant Dignity, details to follow.