U.S. Suspends Costly Deportation Flights Using Military Aircraft

The Trump administration has stopped using military aircraft to fly migrants who entered the U.S. illegally to Guantanamo Bay or other countries, defense officials said.

President Trump has made a crackdown on illegal immigration a focus of his second term. But using military aircraft to transport some migrants to their home countries or to a military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has proved expensive and inefficient, The Wall Street Journal has reported.

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The Trump administration has conducted roughly 30 migrant flights using C-17 aircraft and about a dozen on C-130s, according to flight-tracking data. Destinations included India, Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru, Honduras, Panama and Guantanamo Bay.

But the military flights have taken longer routes and transported fewer migrants at higher cost to taxpayers than the government’s typical deportation flights on civilian aircraft, the Journal found.

Three deportation flights to India cost $3 million each. Some flights carried a dozen people to Guantanamo at a cost of at least $20,000 for a migrant, the Journal’s analysis showed.

A standard U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement flight costs $8,500 per flight hour, according to a government webpage. Former ICE officials told the Journal the figure is closer to $17,000 per flight hour for international trips.

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