The Trump administration is using military planes to conduct deportation flights — including out of the airport in Tucson.
Tucson Sector Border Patrol officials posted on social media about a deportation flight carrying 80 Guatemalan nationals that took off from the Tucson International Airport last week using a military plane. Federal officials told ABC news it’s one of two such flights out of the airport so far, and Tom Homan — President Donald Trump’s so-called Border Czar — has said the flights would become a daily occurrence nationwide.
William Banks is professor emeritus at Syracuse University who specializes in national security. He says the flights are possible because of Trump’s emergency declaration at the border.
“In doing so, he evoked a series of statutes under something called the National Securities Act. Gives him additional authorities beyond his everyday authorities,” he said.

Banks says that includes being able to use the military to support border enforcement efforts.
“He can instruct the Pentagon to do something, what’s called re-program money from one project to another to pay for the flights,” he said.
Banks says previous administrations have also used military aircraft in deportations, but not to the scale the Trump administration is proposing now. This type of deportation flight is different from those done through ICE air — which are commercial airliners that use funding for the Department of Homeland Security.
Banks says more involved use of the military in deportations — and executive orders like the enacting of a centuries-old wartime authority, are likely to face legal challenges.
-
The U.S. Northern Command says 500 soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division will be based in Fort Huachuca — in southeastern Arizona — to support "the effort to take operational control of the southern border."
-
Fausto Isidro Meza Flores is charged in the United States with drug trafficking violations and allegedly leads a violent criminal group in Mexico.
-
Of those people, around 2,500 have been from countries other than Mexico, and Mexico has aided in repatriating some back to their country of origin.
-
The ACLU and other rights groups filed suit against it on behalf of legal service providers at the border — including the Phoenix-based Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project.
-
The move came just before U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office issued a memo that calls for blocking federal grants from reaching so-called sanctuary cities that go against immigration crackdowns.