The Defense Department has begun to repatriate illegal immigrants, using military cargo aircraft as the Trump administration steps up its crackdown at the southern border.
The first such military flight out of El Paso, Texas, took place Thursday evening, originating from Biggs Army Airfield and bound for Guatemala with approximately 80 Guatemalan nationals on board, according to a Department of Homeland Security official authorized to speak with the media.
The forthcoming military repatriation flights, the official specified, are of immigrants apprehended at the southern border and not within the United States, where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers will separately carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation operation.
The first 80 people put on the cargo plane are some of the 5,400 illegal immigrants whom border officials anticipate sending south of the border on military aircraft in the coming days at the direction of Trump.
The C-17 military transport aircraft departed El Paso at 5 p.m. local time Thursday, with future Pentagon repatriation flights also planned out of a base in San Diego, California.
Just as he promised, President Trump is sending a strong message to the world: those who enter the United States illegally will face serious consequences. pic.twitter.com/yqgtF1RX6K
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 24, 2025
The military flights are in addition to the 13 leased aircraft that ICE uses to conduct repatriation and deportation flights on a regular basis.
Acting Secretary of Defense Robert Salesses clarified in a statement Wednesday that the military would assist with the removal flights as well as putting up barriers along the border.
“The Department will provide military airlift to support DHS deportation flights of more than 5,000 illegal aliens from the San Diego, California, and El Paso, Texas, sectors detained by Customs and Border Protection,” Salesses said.
Both El Paso and San Diego are locations the Pentagon has directed military personnel to following Trump’s Monday declaration of a national emergency at the border.
Between Monday and Wednesday, Border Patrol agents in El Paso arrested 451 illegal immigrants, a small figure compared to the several thousand people agents had been arresting daily in El Paso at various points during the Biden administration.
Trump took more than a dozen executive actions on border security and immigration on Monday, including one that authorized “suspending the physical entry of aliens involved in an invasion into the United States across the southern border until I determine that the invasion has concluded.”
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Guatemalans are one of the top nationalities encountered by Border Patrol agents in the El Paso Sector, which includes the western portion of Texas and all of New Mexico.
Illegal immigrants pay Mexican cartels thousands of dollars per person to be smuggled across the U.S. border.