Following their World Cup win against Paraguay, the French team jetted back to Boston base camp on an airplane that has been used for almost a thousand deportation flights in the past four years.
The plane chartered from airline charter company Global X has carried out 44 such flights in 2026 alone, with one occurring just three days before the French national team boarded on July 4th.
It’s not like it’s uncommon for companies of this nature to do business with a variety of clientele, but it has been an uncomfortable revelation from those who stand in opposition to the Trump administration’s mass deportation policies.
We have seen how outspoken some members of this French team have been when it comes to politics. Kylian Mbappe, Ousmane Dembele and Marcus Thuram have all been outspoken against far-right movements in France, many of whom take inspiration from The White House’s stance on immigration.
The Guardian investigated the story using flight tracking data openly available to the public, and matched the team’s plane to the one with a long history of deporting people from the US.
They reached out to both GlobalX and the French football federation for comment, but neither has responded.
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