Donald Trump’s aggressive mass deportation campaign is now fully underway, with harrowing images emerging of illegal migrants shackled and escorted onto military planes bound for their home countries.
“Deportation flights have begun,” declared Karoline Leavitt, the former president’s press secretary, on Friday morning. Along with the announcement, she shared disturbing photos of men in chains—both around their ankles and wrists—lining up on an airfield, a stark reminder of the increasingly militarized approach to immigration enforcement.
Leavitt emphasized that “hundreds of illegal criminals” had been deported, labeling the operation as the “largest mass deportation in history.” On Thursday alone, 538 migrants were arrested, with 373 of them facing charges related to criminal activity, signaling a new chapter in the controversial crackdown on illegal immigration.
HereAmong those deported were a suspected terrorist, four members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang and several illegals convicted of sex crimes against minors, according to Ms Leavitt.
The Tren de Aragua gang became a flashpoint in the election campaign amid claims repeated by Mr Trump that it had turned the city of Aurora, Colorado, into a “war-zone”.
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A border official told Fox News one of the planes took off from an army airfield in El Paso, Texas, on Thursday evening and flew to Guatemala.
A further 460 illegal migrants were arrested between Tuesday morning and Wednesday night, according to Fox.
The two US military aircraft each carried about 80 migrants, a US official said.
It was the first time in recent memory that US military aircraft were being used to fly migrants out of the US, one official added.
The Trump administration is also considering targeting migrants who entered through Biden-era programs and invoking an obscure immigration statute to make it easier to deputise state and local law enforcement to arrest and detain immigrants in the US illegally.
Benjamine Huffman, the acting homeland security secretary, said in a memo made public on Friday that immigration officials could consider whether to strip temporary legal status from migrants who entered through Joe Biden’s signature “parole” programs.
The memo provides guidance for the use of a fast-track deportation process that the Trump administration reinstated earlier this week, suggesting officers focus on migrants who failed to request asylum within a one-year deadline after arriving in the US.
This week Mr Trump declared a national emergency at the US border and he has ordered the defence department to support the border force in “obtaining complete operational control of it”. US Customs and Border Patrol used the emergency declaration to close it off.
The White House is sending 1,500 troops to join the 2,500 already stationed at the southern border for surveillance and processing.
This is the initial wave of troops, with administration insiders preparing to deploy as many as 10,000 troops, prompting concerns within the Pentagon about resourcing.
A justice department memo shows that the Trump administration will seek to prosecute local officials who defy its immigration edicts.
Prosecutors who decline to take forward immigration cases will be reported to the department for investigation, it continued.
Many of the migrant arrests this week have taken place in sanctuary cities to which Mr Trump has suggested cutting off funding.
There are more than 170 sanctuary jurisdictions across the US including California, which limit cooperation with federal agencies attempting to deport undocumented migrants.
“We’re trying to end them, and a lot of the people in those communities don’t want them,” Mr Trump told Fox News.
While Democrat-run sanctuary cities have pledged to resist Mr Trump’s deportation drive, there is a limit to what they can do because it falls under the powers of the federal government.
This week, Mexico began erecting sprawling tents along its border with the US in preparation for the mass deportation drive.
In an empty lot in Ciudad Juárez, which neighbours Texas, cranes lifted metal frames for tent shelters.
Nogales, Mexico, which neighbours Arizona, announced it would build shelters on football fields and in a gymnasium.
The border cities of Matamoros and Piedras Negras have begun similar efforts.
The Mexican government is also building nine shelters in border cities to receive deportees.
It has said that it would also use existing facilities in Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez and Matamoros to take in migrants whose appointments to request asylum in the US were cancelled on inauguration day.
The highly organised campaign is the product of months of preparation by Trump aides who have been coordinating efforts to close the border to asylum seekers while laying the groundwork for a mass deportation programme.
An executive order signed by Mr Trump this week allows immigration officials to arrest migrants in locations previously deemed too “sensitive”, such as schools and churches.
The roughly 10,000 migrants who had been cleared to enter the US under the Biden administration had their flights cancelled by Mr Trump’s administration this week.
If the president is to enact the largest deportation programme in history, there is only so much that he can do via orders he issues from the Resolute Desk. He needs Congress and its “power of the purse”.
Tom Homan, the president’s “border tsar”, is said to have acknowledged as much in private meetings with congressional Republicans.
According to CNN, he plans to target between one million and two million people who can be removed as quickly as possible.
There are 1.4 million people in the US who have received final orders of removal from an immigration judge, which dramatically shortens the appeal process.
But Congress, which on Wednesday passed the Laken Riley Act, requiring the automatic detention of illegal migrants charged with crimes such as burglary or shoplifting, will surely be receptive when Mr Trump starts asking for cash for his mass deportations.
As dizzying as this week has been, with Mr Trump tearing up reams of established US migration policy, he is just getting started.
Migrants, Immigration, Donald Trump, Mexico
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