The Trump administration is following through on what the returning president has said would be the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history.
The White House confirmed on Friday that flights deporting illegal immigrants out of the United States have started, revealing photos of military aircraft transporting people.
“Deportation flights have begun. 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,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote on social media platform
X on Friday morning.
Her post included images of individuals walking onto military-style planes in handcuffs as officials watched. It’s not clear when or where the two photos were captured.
The Epoch Times contacted the White House press office for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.
Hours before Leavitt’s announcement, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
said in an update that it had made 538 arrests and lodged 373 detainers for illegal immigrants on Thursday, which was
also confirmed by Leavitt in another post on X. Some of the individuals, according to her post, were part of a notorious Venezuelan-based gang known as Tren de Aragua as well as a “suspected terrorist.”
“The Trump Administration arrested 538 illegal immigrant criminals including a suspected terrorist, four members of the Tren de Aragua gang, and several illegals convicted of sex crimes against minors,” she wrote in full, separately
adding that hundreds of people were deported “via military aircraft.”
Before taking office and during his 2024 campaign, Trump and his surrogates often said they would initiate the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history, blaming the previous administration for not enforcing border security and immigration laws.
The president’s border czar, Tom Homan, said in interviews with the press that the Trump administration would first target illegal immigrants who had violent criminal records, were suspected terrorists, or were a public security threat. He said illegal immigrants without a criminal history could be detained and deported in those operations in what he termed as “
collateral arrests.“
Soon after taking office on Monday, Trump signed several executive orders, including one that declared a national emergency along the U.S.–Mexico border due to illegal immigration, crime, and drug trafficking. Another order he signed declared that the illegal immigration situation is an invasion under Article IV, Section 4, of the U.S. Constitution.
“Our southern border is overrun by cartels, criminal gangs, known terrorists, human traffickers, smugglers, unvetted military-age males from foreign adversaries, and illicit narcotics that harm Americans,” Trump
wrote as he declared the emergency.
Officials also
ended the functionality of the CBP One app that individuals outside the United States used to schedule immigration-related appointments at U.S. ports of entry, and all existing appointments through the app were canceled. That decision was made just minutes after Trump delivered his inaugural address on Monday.
The president also signed an order limiting birthright citizenship to prevent children born in the United States to illegal immigrants from gaining automatic citizenship. The order was blocked by a Washington state-based judge on Thursday.
Benjamine Huffman, acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, also
issued a directive on Thursday expanding the roles of the U.S. Marshals, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives in investigating and apprehending illegal immigrants.
“Thanks to the last Administration’s open border policies, we’ve seen violent criminals and gang members terrorize American communities,” Huffman said in a statement on Thursday.
“Today’s action empowers law enforcement officials at the DOJ to help identify and apprehend aliens who have illegally come into our country.”
The move, he said, was because “efforts to find and apprehend illegal aliens have not been given proper resources” for several decades, adding that his directive is a “major step in fixing that problem.”
