This is the Future the NCAA and Universities are Funding

A college basketball team boards a plane. They are the face of the American Dream—buckled into leather seats, surrounded by coaches, and flying toward a national title.

Twelve hours later, that exact same aircraft—tail number N281GX—is loaded with 113 people. While student-athletes celebrated in those seats just a few hours before, these passengers are forced into handcuffs, leg irons, and waist chains. Among them is a child.

That child could have been one of those athletes. They could have been the next star point guard or a future MVP. Instead, while a team celebrated on those same seats, your tournament dollars were used to fly that child toward a detention camp. The same plane that carries a trophy in the morning carries a child in chains by nightfall.

This is how futures are being destroyed.

Take action now

Teams who have flown on an ICE airline during the 2026 March Madness tournament

GlobalX or Eastern Air

WHY THIS MATTERS

This isn’t just about one flight. A Guardian investigation of leaked records found that in just five months, GlobalX transported nearly 1,000 children, including 22 infants. The NCAA is a major sports partner for this fleet, providing a $5 million contract that helps keep these planes in the air. While major airlines like Southwest and United already have rules to protect human rights, the NCAA has none. They are using our tuition and our brackets to pay GlobalX, an airline that treats infants like cargo.

Your Dollars Feed the Engine

The NCAA is a billion-dollar non-profit funded by universities, your tickets, and your brackets. When your school pays for a tournament charter, that money goes to GlobalX—the primary airline for the ICE air network, making $65M a year trafficking and deporting people. Your tuition and your fan support are the financial engine keeping GlobalX planes in the air as they shuttle thousands of people between detention camps.

A Betrayal of Values

Our universities claim to stand for "human rights" and "student welfare." But those values shouldn't stop at the boarding gate. By contracting with an airline whose planes are used for the inhumane treatment of passengers, the NCAA is telling us that their bottom line matters more than their principles. The same fleet the NCAA pays for is used to carry out the deportation of international students—including over 1,600 scholars whose visas were revoked since 2025.

A Problem with a Simple Choice

This isn't a complicated political debate; it’s a simple choice. Southwest and United already have policies that refuse to treat human beings like cargo. In fact, they publicly refused to fly children separated from their families. Even more importantly, our own universities already have these standards. Schools like UConn and Michigan have strict Vendor Codes of Conduct that require every contractor to respect international human rights.

Why does the NCAA—which exists only to represent these schools—not uphold the same standards as the universities it serves? The NCAA has the power to adopt these same Vendor Codes of Conduct for its own contracts today and reflect the values and excellence that universities and sports demand of their own communities.