They need more planes.
The Trump administration began its promised deportations of illegal immigrants this week, but senior Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said Friday that more aircraft are needed to speed up the process.
Miller told reporters that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had been hampered in its ability to deport illegal migrants because of a lack of aircraft and the administration is trying to secure enough planes from half a dozen sources, per Bloomberg.
ICE raids took place as early as Tuesday and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt released photos of people boarding C-17s on Friday morning, announcing that “deportation flights had begun,”. One of the photos was taken at Biggs Army Airfield at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, U.S. and it was one of two flights that had departed for Guatemala on Thursday at 5 p.m. local time.
Customs and Border Protection sources told Fox News the plane in the image had 80 people. A third flight, bound for Mexico, never took off after Mexico declined to consent to the landing, a State Department official told Fox News.
But on Friday Miller suggested the administration was looking to scale up the operations and was looking into sourcing aircraft including from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Defense (DOD) to do so.
“You have obviously DHS air assets, you have DOD air assets, you have State Department air assets, you have commercial air assets, you have charter air assets, so every asset that can be used to conduct a lawful deportation,” Miller said, per Bloomberg.
“Border czar” Tom Homan told ABC News on Friday that the administration will use military aircraft every day to help carry out the operation.
Around 2,000 illegal immigrants were deported to Mexico on Thursday, both on the ground and in the air. In addition, Mexico detained roughly 5,000 migrants within its borders, Fox News reported.
When asked about the need for more aircraft, Leavitt said that the Trump administration is using both military and non-military aircrafts to accomplish this mission.
“In one week, the Trump Administration has already facilitated a record number of illegal migrant deportation flights, and the Administration is using both military and non-military aircrafts to accomplish this mission,” Leavitt said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
“Joe Biden allowed tens of millions of illegal criminals into the country, and in order to detain and deport as many as possible, Congress must past a reconciliation bill that includes funding for border enforcement, detention centers, and deportation efforts.”
The administration has taken a number of actions to secure the border, including deploying the military, restarting wall construction and ending Biden-era parole programs.
The Department of Homeland Security has issued a slew of memos since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, ordering reviews of parole and expanding the ability of officials to quickly deport illegal immigrants from the U.S. who have recently arrived. Those memos have been signed by Acting Secretary Benjamine Huffman.
Meanwhile, Miller also said that the administration would use various tools to remove those granted humanitarian parole to enter the country when they otherwise wouldn’t have permission.
“There’s digital footprints, there’s financial footprints, there’s routine law enforcement intelligence,” he said. “There’s a wide array of tools we have to identify and remove those individuals.”
According to Bloomberg, former President Joe Biden declined to use military aircraft. His administration often used commercial aircraft to deport migrants.
Fox News’ Adam Shaw and Louis Casiano contributed to this report.
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