‘If you illegally enter the United States of America, you will face severe consequences,’ said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Mexico has accepted the first four deportation flights of illegal immigrants from the United States, the White House said on Jan. 25.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the flights set a new record for deportations to Mexico in a single day.
“Yesterday, Mexico accepted a record 4 deportation flights in 1 day!” Leavitt wrote in a Jan. 25 post on social media platform X.
“This comes in addition to unrestricted returns at the land border, the deportation of non-Mexicans, & reinstatement of Remain-in-Mexico. Mexico has also mobilized 30K National Guard.”
Leavitt’s comments followed some media reporting that Mexico had refused a deportation flight access to its airspace on Friday, though other deportation flights to Guatemala had continued as scheduled.
The Trump administration subsequently said that the delay was due to an administrative issue, and Mexico’s foreign ministry said in a Jan. 24 statement that the country had a “very great relationship” with the United States and cooperated on immigration issues.
“When it comes to repatriations, we will always accept the arrival of Mexicans to our territory with open arms,” the ministry said.
The Trump administration announced earlier in the week that it was re-launching the program known as Remain in Mexico, which required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until their cases in the United States were resolved.
“Deportation flights have begun,” Leavitt wrote in another post on X. “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.”
The Pentagon is aiming to provide flights for the deportations of more than 5,000 illegal immigrants being held by U.S. authorities in California and Texas in the coming weeks to accommodate the policy shift.
Trump has moved quickly to reshape U.S. immigration policy and border security since assuming office on Jan. 20. The president has issued an executive order declaring a national emergency along the U.S.–Mexico border, another declaring the situation is an invasion, and another seeking to categorize drug cartels as terror organizations.
He has also ordered some 1,500 additional U.S. troops to the border, with thousands more tapped to be deployed should the situation warrant, including from the 82nd Airborne Division.
It is likely that the scale of arrests and deportations will increase for the foreseeable future, as federal officers have already made hundreds of arrests in the first days of Trump’s second term and the administration has revoked several policies enacted by the prior administration.
Among the policies that the administration has broken with is decade-long policy that prohibited federal authorities from arresting illegal immigrants in or near schools, churches, and food banks.