That is an unreasonable concern. ICE is not forcibly diverting commercial planes, nor are you going to win the anti-lottery of being the first.

If your flight is going to land in the US it will be because of an emergency or diversion. In an emergency they will land wherever they need to for safety. Even domestic flights near the US could divert across the boarder. But that is also incredibly rare.

The US charges airlines overflight fees for passing through the airspace controlled by the US, this includes the most of the pacific and atlantic. Any flight to Mexico will have the airline pay a fee to the US for the ATC services.

If you want to avoid the US fully you'll have to plan a stopover in Europe, and South America or Africa. But I don't think your concerns are reasonable.

This is very unlikely to happen, but there’s precedent. The Bolivian president’s plane was diverted to Vienna, grounded, and searched because authorities believed Edward Snowden was aboard. There’s other examples of this shit happening (mostly in Europe).

The only thing far fetched about this scenario is that the US would employ this to randomly try to round up unspecified immigrants in order to detain them. If they catch wind of someone they deem high profile, though? Would not surprise me, but I would be surprised if they came after me because I shitpost on Lenny.

There are no standard flights that avoid US airspace when it would be faster to fly over. One, it’s a waste of time and money, and two, aircraft prefer to stick close to land in case they need to make an emergency landing (source: I vaguely remember reading that on Wikipedia once but I might have been drunk at the time).

If someone were legitimately concerned about this, they’d need to fly well away and back again (like make a flight change in Asia or Europe) so flight lanes don’t cross over the US.

Do you mean flights that fly directly to Mexico from Canada?

Otherwise, you should be fine. ICE doesn't have jurisdiction over the FAA and can't just order random planes down. Especially planes from one country to another with no intervening stops in America. What on Earth would the rationale be? "Hey, citizens of other countries who had no intention of entering the US, we've kidnapped you and now you're stuck here!"

There are plenty of valid concerns and fears about America but having them ground international, non US bound flights would be a nonsensical international incident with 0 gain.

If you fly via El Salvador you should be able to get around America.

You should be safe flying over the US, ICE does not yet have control of the FAA. Even once they get control of the FAA the FAA cannot get a plane flying with a flight plan. Again this is true unless another 9/11 happens, even then you will hopefully either not be out of Canadian airspace or to high up to actually land in the US.

Sure, MAGA fascists don't have to make a lot of sense, but what's the point of forcibly bringing in people you'd want to send out on a plane anyway, when it was planning to do that in the first place? I think that should be obvious to even the most faithful followers.

Anyway, as a thought experiment, if you love being seated on planes but you think US airspace stinks, you can go from Mexico City to Toronto via Bogotá and Paris or Madrid if you are okay with passing above Puerto Rico only.

Or, to avoid it completely, you can go to Panamá, Rio de Janeiro, Lisbon, then Toronto. Now to compare flight prices and travel times (won't include any layover time, price is lowest baggage tier, random dates in October)

• MEX -> YYZ direct: $387, 4h50m
• MEX -> BOG -> MAD -> LIS -> YYZ: $1827, 23h40m
• MEX -> PTY -> GIG -> LIS -> YYZ: $2583, 28h50m.