Following months of intense debate, the Denver City Council voted 11-1 to approve a lease for Key Lime Air, a charter airline operating under the name Denver Air Connection that contracts with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The decision, passed alongside agreements with nine other airlines, grants the regional carrier a three-year contract with two one-year extension options for gate and lease space at Denver International Airport (DIA).
The vote marks a sharp reversal from ten months prior, when council members rejected a proposal to expand the carrier’s airport footprint after condemning its role in chartering deportation flights. However, council leadership emphasized that blocking the commercial passenger and cargo lease would carry severe legal and financial risks for DIA while failing to halt ICE charter operations, which function separately.
Councilmember Kevin Flynn urged colleagues to consider the functional limitations of local oversight during Tuesday night’s session. “Rejecting this agreement cannot change anything, except for us,” Flynn stated. “We would face all the consequences and Key Lime Air would have none.”
Councilmember Amanda Sawyer echoed Flynn’s stance, framing the approving vote as a pragmatic necessity despite personal opposition to the federal deportation contracts. “If voting no on this contract would stop deportation flights out of DIA, I would absolutely consider sacrificing that, but it won’t. It will not,” Sawyer said. “And at the end of the day, that means that we would sacrifice what our residents want in their airport experience for a hollow moral victory. I don’t think that that’s what our residents want. And so I will be a yes tonight.”
Key Lime Air, which self-identifies as the nation’s largest single feeder aircraft network, has operated cargo at DIA since 2006 and scheduled passenger flights since November 2015.
