The Trump administration is repatriating illegal aliens from the United States back to their countries of origin at an increasing rate, beginning with the bad actors: Known criminals, gang members, and people on the terror watch list. Not so very long ago, when someone was deported from the United States, say from southern California, they generally got a bus ride back across the border and were let out someplace like Tijuana – where they could literally walk back to the border with the Estados Unidos and try again.
Not anymore. The Trump administration is flying Mexican illegal aliens far to the south, much closer to the border with Guatemala than to the United States. Fox News’ Bill Melugin has that news.
NEW: A CBP official tells @FoxNews that since Trump’s inauguration, 1,650 Mexican illegal aliens have been deported deep into the interior of MX on 14 DHS removal flights. 1,308 of them came from Border Patrol arrests at the southern border. CBP says the Trump admin is flying…
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) February 26, 2025
Mr. Melugin’s post reads in full:
NEW: A CBP official tells @FoxNews that since Trump’s inauguration, 1,650 Mexican illegal aliens have been deported deep into the interior of MX on 14 DHS removal flights. 1,308 of them came from Border Patrol arrests at the southern border. CBP says the Trump admin is flying these Mexican illegal aliens deep into Mexico rather than having them bussed back across the river, with the goal being they want to make it as difficult as possible for them to get back to the border and try crossing again.
The US consulate in Nuevo Laredo just put out a warning to migrants, alerting them that DHS is flying illegal aliens as far south into Mexico as the border with Guatemala, and any illegal crossings will be met with “immediate and permanent deportation.”
“Illegal entry is not a trial and error process,” a CBP official tells me. “Deportation is final, you don’t get to try again tomorrow or in a few hours. Certainty of release is over, there is now certainty of arrest, detention, and removal.”
This, folks, is how it’s done. Every mile farther from the border these people are taken is one mile more they have to walk to try to once more violate American immigration law. And that law is now being enforced with increasing vigor, unlike the practice of the previous administration.
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As with so many things, it’s all about incentives, and the risk vs. reward calculation. All of these people are doing such a calculation, whether they realize it or not. That’s precisely why illegal border crossings exploded under the “Weekend at Bernie’s” Biden administration because there was no incentive to avoid such an attempt; most of the people attempting entry knew that they stood little or no risk except the coyotes and cartels they paid to get them across. Once they were in the United States, they were handed a metaphorical bag of biscuits and tossed into the taxpayer-funded gravy train.
That calculus is changing now. Illegals are being sent back to where they belong – that’s why these are not so much deportations as repatriations. They are being sent back as far away from our border as we can get them, reducing the incentive for them to make another attempt. And when they do get caught crossing, they are not simply given a pat on the behind, a benefits application package, a bus ticket, and a hotel room key and welcomed in.
Things are changing. And it is about damn time.
