Migrants describe flights aboard US military planes carrying out Trump's swift deportations
Migrants describe flights aboard US military planes carrying out Trump's swift deportations
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Margarita Raymundo walked down the ramp of the U.S. Air Force cargo jet and onto the tarmac of Guatemala City’s airport, barely three days after a U.S. Border Patrol agent had apprehended her, along with three other migrants. The swift deportation Monday was disorienting for her and the 63 other migrants aboard and only possible because the Trump administration has enlisted the military to quickly scale up its deportation capacity, which usually relies on chartered flights.
In the first week of U.S. President Donald Trump's second term, the Department of Homeland Security reported deporting some 7,300 people of various nationalities. The agent who apprehended Raymundo just a five-minute walk from the highway where a vehicle awaited to take her further into the U.S. told her that her deportation would be quick and warned that if she were to be caught again she’d spend five years in prison, she said.
The presence of U.S. military planes landing in Latin America raises concerns in a region with a history of U.S. military intervention, more so when they’re carrying citizens of those countries in shackles. Colombian President Gustavo Petro refused to let two U.S. military planes carrying deportees land in his country over the weekend. Instead, two Colombian air force planes were sent to the U.S. to pick up the Colombians and bring them home Tuesday, but only after a Trump tariff threat and a furious bout of diplomacy.
