Kylian Mbappé has spent years positioning himself as one of soccer's loudest voices against the far right, calling anti-immigration politicians "catastrophic" and rallying French youth to keep extremists out of power. Then he and his teammates boarded a plane run by the airline that hauls migrants in shackles to Trump's favorite Salvadoran mega-prison. No, seriously.
The Plane That Does Both Jobs
The Guardian broke the story after a video posted to France's official Instagram account showed players walking through the cabin of a GlobalX aircraft following their 1-0 win over Paraguay on July 4th. A GlobalX logo sticker was visible on an overhead compartment as Bayern Munich forward Michael Olise passed a flight attendant. Subtle branding for a deeply unsubtle operation.
Global Crossing Airlines, known as GlobalX, has operated more than half of ICE's removal flights in 2024 and 2025. The Guardian ran a major investigation into the company last year, analyzing five months of leaked flight data that showed how the airline moves thousands of detainees domestically and internationally, often without notice, cutting them off from their families and legal counsel. Constitutional due process experts called it exactly what it sounds like.
The specific aircraft France used after the Paraguay match had flown 44 deportation-related flights this year alone. According to data from ICE Flight Monitor, a tracking project housed at Human Rights First, that same plane transferred detained immigrants from an Arizona detention facility to Louisiana on July 1st. France boarded it four days later.
From Shackles to Shin Guards, Same Seats
ICE Flight Monitor's data manager Sierra Randolph told the Guardian this kind of scheduling is completely routine. "It's common for certain carriers to oscillate between operating ICE flights and other private entity charter flights, including athletic teams, within a week or even on the same day," she said. Same plane, same seats, different passengers, wildly different experiences.
The Guardian used flight tracking data from Flightradar24 to confirm the French team's movements, matching an Airbus that departed Philadelphia International around midnight on July 5th and arrived at Boston Logan around 1am to an aircraft ICE Flight Monitor regularly tracks for immigration enforcement activity. This wasn't a coincidence they stumbled across. This was documented, methodical, and deeply ironic.
GlobalX has flown detainees to El Salvador's Cecot, a maximum-security prison that has become a symbol of the Trump administration's most extreme deportation tactics. Detainees on GlobalX flights have described being shackled at their hands and feet, and kept entirely in the dark about their destination. The French squad presumably got a beverage service.
Mbappé Has Been Very Loud About This Stuff
To be clear about who we're talking about here: Kylian Mbappé is not a guy who keeps his politics vague. His father is from Cameroon. His mother is of Algerian descent. He has repeatedly and emphatically called out the National Rally, France's far-right anti-immigration party, calling their electoral gains "catastrophic" in 2024 and urging young people to stop the country from "falling into the hands of these people."
His teammates have followed his lead. Ousmane Dembélé, Jules Koundé, and Marcus Thuram have all been outspoken about driving French voters to the polls against far-right candidates. Marcus's father, World Cup winner Lilian Thuram, has spent decades as an activist. Even Zinedine Zidane came out swinging against Marine Le Pen in 2017. This is a team that has made its politics unusually clear for professional athletes.
This week, Mbappé also made headlines for calling a Paraguayan senator a "despicable woman" after she launched a racist attack on him following the match. The man is not shy. Which makes the optics of the airline situation particularly painful.
France Isn't Alone in This
Here's the thing that makes this a systemic problem and not just a story about ironic scheduling: France isn't the only team doing this. The Guardian confirmed the French squad used GlobalX for at least three domestic flights between World Cup games and their base camp in Boston. But the Daily Mail reported last month that England's national squad had a contract with GlobalX, and that Iran had also used the airline during the tournament.
A spokesman for the English Football Association declined to comment to the Daily Mail. GlobalX did not respond to the Guardian's requests for comment. Representatives for the French national team also did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Everyone is very busy not answering questions.
The World Cup is being hosted across the United States, Canada, and Mexico this summer, which means every team playing games on American soil needs domestic charter flights. GlobalX, apparently, is where you go. The company has carved out a remarkable position: dominant contractor for a federal deportation machine and apparently a go-to vendor for international soccer's biggest tournament, all at the same time.
The Right Wing Is Already Loving This
France's National Rally members have already been dismissing political statements from the French national team with a "shut up and dribble" attitude, according to the Guardian. A team this vocal and this public about its values was always going to draw that reaction from the right. Now they've handed those critics a gift wrapped in a GlobalX logo sticker.
The team has not acknowledged the reporting. There is no indication anyone knew, or thought to check, who exactly was running their charter flights through the American domestic market. That is believable. It is also not a great look when you have spent years telling young French people that immigration politics are a moral emergency.
The Dingo Take
Look, nobody is accusing Mbappé of personally booking the team's flights. Travel logistics for a World Cup squad run through administrators, federations, and corporate contracts several layers removed from the players who speak at press conferences. The team almost certainly had no idea. That's the most generous read, and it's probably the accurate one.
But the story isn't really about hypocrisy. It's about how thoroughly GlobalX has embedded itself into American logistics at every level. The same company that shackles migrants and flies them to a Salvadoran prison in the middle of the night is also the vendor international sports federations call when they need a midnight hop from Philadelphia to Boston. That's not a coincidence. That's a company that has made itself indispensable, quietly, while the rest of us weren't watching the flight manifests.
The French team should address this. Not because they're uniquely guilty, but because they are uniquely positioned. When you've spent years telling people that anti-immigration politics are catastrophic, you have more of an obligation than most to know who is fueling the plane. The silence from the federation right now is the loudest thing in the room.
