US President Donald Trump continued the expulsion of migrants to their home countries, sending another military plane with migrants to Guatemala, Reuters reported, quoted by BTA.
A plane carrying migrants landed in Guatemala on Monday afternoon local time after departing from Texas. A Guatemalan official told Reuters that there were 64 people on board the military transport plane.
Trump promised that the unprecedented use of military planes to deport migrants would continue, and that countries that protest would be subject to punitive tariffs. "For the first time in history, we are locating and loading illegal aliens onto military aircraft and sending them back to where they came from," Trump told Republicans gathered at his golf club in Doral, Florida. "We are being respected again after years of being laughed at like we were stupid," he added.
The flight is the third to successfully land in Guatemala since the military began deportation flights last week. To date, Guatemala is the only country to have accepted such flights carrying migrants.
On Sunday, Colombian President Gustavo Petro refused to allow two U.S. military C-17 planes to land in his country after they took off from California loaded with migrants. Trump responded immediately by threatening Colombia with stiff tariffs and sanctions. Colombia quickly relented and the White House said it had agreed to accept military aircraft carrying migrants.
The use of U.S. military aircraft to carry out deportation flights is part of the Pentagon's response to Trump's national policy of declaring a national emergency on immigration last week. Last week, the Pentagon said the U.S. military would provide aircraft to deport more than 5,000 immigrants detained by U.S. authorities in El Paso, Texas, and San Diego, California.
In the past, U.S. military aircraft have been used to move people from one country to another, such as during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. But this is the first time in history that U.S. military aircraft have been used to remove migrants from the country, U.S. officials said.