In historic first, military aircraft used to deport illegal aliens to country of origin | Law Enforcement Today

In historic first, military aircraft used to deport illegal aliens to country of origin | Law Enforcement Today
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GUATEMALA CITY, GUATEMALA- Military aircraft are being used in efforts to deport illegal aliens from the United States for the first time, as the Trump administration moves to significantly increase the federal government's capabilities to deport those with no legal right to reside in the country.

The White House shared images of chained criminal migrants being led into the cabin of a C-17 Globemaster aircraft on Friday. The administration later confirmed that the migrants in question were being returned to Guatemala. The official White House X account also pointed to the operation as an example of President Trump fulfilling his promise to deport criminal migrants. The initial C-17 deportation flight left the country from a Houston airport. It wasn't the only flight to take place on Thursday, with the government also releasing photos of a C-17 deportation flight taking off from a flight line in Tucson, Arizona. The government of Mexico appears to have denied one C-17 permission to land and offboard migrants in the country, in what amounts to a diplomatic slight of the United States. Mexico's reasoning for denying the aircraft permission to land is unclear, but some have speculated that the craft's military nature may have spurred the move. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has traditionally used chartered flights to send illegal migrants to their home countries. The Trump administration's use of military transport aircraft on Thursday potentially represents a more comprehensive approach to deportation, in which the limited availability of charter airliners would not prove a limiting factor in removing migrants to their countries of origin. Some advocates of immigration enforcement have also proposed that the Trump administration acquire other civilian aircraft for the express use of regular deportation flights- a measure likely to prove more cost-efficient and amenable to deporting millions of migrants as quickly as possible.

In spite of the early operation, some supporters of Trump have called on the administration to rapidly increase the scale and scope of deportation operations, calling the current level of deportations carried out by ICE insufficient. The agency has disclosed carrying out roughly 300 arrests a day, a grand total unlikely to significantly release the illegal alien population nationwide- a demographic that swelled to between 20 and 25 million people under Trump's predecessor, President Joe Biden.

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