As a part of his ongoing effort to carry out mass-deportations throughout the country, President Donald Trump has employed the use of Department of Defense resources to return many migrants to their home countries.
Publicly available data suggests that using U.S. Military planes to fly migrants out of the country may be significantly more expensive than flights chartered by the Department of Homeland Security.
A US defense official told CNN that the military has not begun to calculate the costs of the flight since a national emergency was declared by Trump on Monday, and officials are moving as quickly as possible with little regard to cost, the official said.
The DOD reported on Wednesday that they would be providing two C-17s and two C-130E planes to help with what are known as “migrant repatriation flights.”
According to the DOD comptroller, as of fall 2022, the average hourly cost of operating a C-17 was about $21,000 and the average hourly cost of operating a C-130E was between $68,000 and $71,000. Based on these figures it can be estimated that the C-17 flight on Thursday that carried 80 migrants from El Paso, Texas to Guatemala City would have cost roughly $252,000. For the same 12-hour flight using the C-130E, it would cost between $816,000 and $852,000.
In comparison, a flight directly chartered by DHS’ Immigration and Customs Enforcement is $8,577, according to estimates posted by the agency.
Along with the military flights active duty troops have been deployed to the border to assist with the deportations and the Pentagon will likely move funds within its budget authorized by Congress for “unforeseen, high-priority missions,” retired Gen. Glen VanHerck, the former commander of US Northern Command, told CNN.
Troops have already arrived in various areas of the southern border, including 1,500 Marines from combat engineer battalions at Camp Pendleton, California.
ICE raids have already begun throughout the country, including one in New Jersey on Thursday, which saw several U.S. citizens, including, a U.S. military veteran detained by ICE. Newark Mayor Mayor Ras Baraka said in a statement that ICE “raided a local establishment” According to Baraka the agents did not produce a warrant and did detain several undocumented immigrants in addition to the U.S. citizens.
Source : https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/trumps-first-deportation-flights-average-931578