As Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation flights reach record highs, the airlines running the trips have taken steps to make it more difficult to track the planes used to carry shackled people across the country and around the world. That's according to independent groups monitoring the flights. In recent months, ICE Air contractors started using dummy call signs for the planes in the air and are hiding their tail numbers so they can't be located on public tracking websites. Once on the ground, the planes are parked behind buildings so the migrants can't be seen arriving or boarding. Despite these obstacles, dedicated immigrant rights advocates have created ways to follow ICE flights using shared information and crowdsourced data from radio signals.

All the recent aviation disasters and close calls definitely have people worried about the safety of flying. The midair collision that killed 67 near Washington D.C., was the worst of the recent disasters and near misses. There was also a fiery plane crash in Philadelphia, a plane crash in Alaska that killed 10 and a plane that flipped over upon landing in Toronto. Then this week there was the scary close call in Chicago. There have been other problems, too. But experts still say flying remains the safest form of transportation compared with driving or even riding on a train.

Salvage crews have removed a large portion of a commercial jet from the Potomac River near Washington's Reagan National Airport after a midair collision last week that killed 67 people. Authorities have said the operation to remove the plane will take several days and they will then work to remove the military helicopter involved in the crash. The crash between the American Airlines jet and an Army helicopter over Washington, D.C. on Wednesday was the deadliest U.S. air disaster since 2001. More than 300 responders are taking part in the recovery effort at any given time. Two Navy barges are deployed to lift heavy wreckage.

Police boats continue to search the Potomac River as part of the recovery and investigation into the United States' deadliest aviation disaster in almost a quarter century. Washington, D.C., Fire Chief John Donnelly Sr. said Friday that bodies of 41 of the 67 people who died in Wednesday night's collision between an American Airlines jet and an Army helicopter have been recovered. Planes continue to take off and land at Ronald Reagan National Airport, where the plane was about to land when the collision occurred, though officials say two of the airport's three runways remained closed on Friday. Federal investigators have said they would not speculate on the cause.