Within just a little over four days after Donald Trump took over as the 47th President of the United States, the country has begun deportation flights for illegal immigrants using military aircraft.
Mass deportation of illegal immigrants has been one of the major poll promises of the Trump campaign. In this regard, Trump has also signed an executive order declaring that future children born to undocumented immigrants would no longer be treated as citizens.
The Department of Defense said two of its aircraft conducted repatriation flights from the US to Guatemala.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt later told reporters that Trump's border policies have already led to the arrest of 538 illegal immigrants and deportation flights using military aircraft, the first since President Dwight Eisenhower, have begun.
"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," she wrote on X.
During an interaction with journalists at North Carolina, President Trump asserted that, "Deportation is going very well. We're getting the bad, hard criminals out. These are murderers. These are people that have been as bad as you get, as bad as anybody you've seen. We're taking them out first."
Rep. Tony Gonzales, a congressman from Texas said on Friday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement worked in cooperation with the Department of Defense in transporting 80 nationals of Guatemala off the premises at Biggs Army Airfield for deportation.
"Texas has been the epicenter of the border crisis and will remain the epicenter for deportation operations. In four days, President Trump has done more to protect our country than Biden did in four years," he said.
While speaking on the Senate Floor earlier this week, Senator Michael Benette said the Bill Laken Act provides to stop the issuing of visas to countries which refuse to accept deported people.
This bill would give State attorneys general the ability to seek a nationwide injunction completely blocking certain countries, such as India, China and El Salvador, from sending immigrants here, he said.
Imagine a Salvadorian farmworker on an H-2A visa living in Florida or Louisiana committing a violent crime leading to a deportation order. He should be deported. I am not here to dispute that. I don't dispute that, Benette said.
But with this bill, if El Salvador doesn't accept his deportation, Florida's attorney general could ask a court to force the Federal Government to ban all visas from El Salvador or all H-2A visas or all H-1B visas for high-tech workers for all that matters," he added.
Congressman Gabe Vasquez, however said that mass deportations would hurt every aspect of the economy and society. "Hardworking immigrants who contribute billions to our economy, to our family farms, to our rural small businesses and our nation's emerging industries deserve a fair shot at residency and citizenship," he said.
DREAMers are worried that they'll be deported from the only country that they've ever called home, Congresswoman Linda Sanchez said.
"Families are worried that they're going to be torn apart. Children who go to school are afraid that they may come home to an empty house. They are afraid to go to church or even to seek medically necessary care in hospitals where they could be detained and deported," she said.
"Who's going to rebuild Los Angeles if we're deporting a huge pool of our workforce who are construction workers? What happens when they're deported? What do we think will happen to the cost of housing, which is already expensive enough? Without their skilled labour the recovery will be much slower and more expensive and take much longer," she said.
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