Less than a week into his presidency, the Trump administration touted deportation efforts including use of military planes for deportations.
President Donald Trump’s administration portrayed U.S. military planes carrying migrants that touched down in Central America as a start to deportations and announced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement made 593 arrests on Friday and 538 on Thursday.
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One of two Air Force C-17 aircraft included in the effort Thursday was a Travis Air Force Base plane. Another was from McChord Air Force Base in Washington.
One C-17 took off from Biggs Army Air Field, Texas, and another from Tucson, Ariz., on Thursday, according to a report in Air & Space Forces Magazine.
“Deportation flights have begun,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a post on the social media platform X that included the image of the Travis AFB plane. “President Trump is sending a strong and clear message to the entire world: if you illegally enter the United States of America, you will face severe consequences.”
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The Pentagon plans to use U.S. Air Force C-17s and C-130s to deport 5,400 people currently detained by Customs and Border Protection, officials have said.
Defense officials did not say how many people were aboard each of the C-17s. The Pentagon said that the Department of Homeland Security would provide “inflight law enforcement,” not military personnel.
Honduras received two deportation flights Friday carrying a total of 193 people, the Foreign Ministry confirmed to the Associated Press.
However, officials underscored that this was normal. Antonio García, vice foreign minister of Honduras, said the government has an agreement with the U.S. to accept between eight and 10 flights a week.
“The big question is how many more flights they will ask us to take,” he told the AP. “We will hear them out and we want them to hear our plans and concerns.”
Using military planes to carry out deportations is not the only use of military the Trump administration has employed in border security. The administration has also sent U.S. soldiers and Marines to the U.S.-Mexico border.
