Rachel Maddow

Liam's like any other kid at the airport except for where he's going.

Except for the fact that U.S.

President Donald Trump is sending him to prison at age five.

Finally, Liam and his dad and these minders line up with the other passengers and they head off for their flight.

A boy, his dad, his Spider-Man backpack, a nonstop Delta Airlines flight from Minneapolis to San Antonio on the way to family immigration prison.

Nick Benson went through that footage.

He shared it with an excellent aviation journalist named Gillian Burkell, who broke this story last week.

Gillian Burkell has tracked apparent ICE flights all around the world to places like Eswatini in Africa and Ireland and Egypt.

She told us this was the first time she had seen this other part of what they call ICE air, not the flights on charter aircraft or contract aircraft that load up people in shackles, right?

But this other part that is happening quietly around all the rest of us unsuspecting passengers, on passenger airlines, in regular airports, flying prisoners to Trump prison camps to be held without trial, including little kids.

We contacted Delta Airlines for comment.

They told us what they told Gillian Burkell, that government air travel is often booked via third parties like travel agencies.

They said airlines may not have advance notice or detail as to who may be flying and for what reason.

Delta also, and we should have seen this coming, they pointed us back to that happy ABC News report about Liam and his dad being flown home from Dili on a Delta flight.

That's the one where the pilots were so nice and they gave Liam his little wings.

Delta was very happy to promote its involvement in Liam's homecoming, but not so much their involvement with sending him to prison.

We also reached out to the Department of Homeland Security with a number of questions about the video from the Minneapolis airport and how the government manages commercial airline travel with federal agents transporting prisoners against their will, including minors.

We haven't heard back, we'll let you know if we do.

What we do know is that what we can see in that video of Liam and his dad at the Minneapolis airport, we know that that is not an isolated incident.

We know that ICE is moving immigrant families and little kids on domestic commercial flights.