After the beginning of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, Mexican authorities blocked a United States military plane from deporting illegal migrants on Thursday, January 23.
The deportation flights were part of a nationwide crackdown on illegal immigrants ordered by Trump in the early days of his presidency.
US officials told NBC News that a jet filled with illegal immigrants bound for Mexico never took off after authorities south of the border rejected the move.
The flight was one of three that were set to take off on Thursday, alongside two Guatemala-bound Air Force C-17s carrying over 150 people, as part of what Trump has described as the largest mass deportation effort in US history.
Deporting migrants to foreign countries requires permission from the incoming nation’s government, which Mexico declined on Thursday.
It is not clear why Mexican authorities moved to block the flight, which came hours after an American hiker was also shot by suspected Mexican cartel members in California a few hundred yards north of the border.
Trump’s return to the White House quickly inflamed relations between the two nations, with the new president threatening to impose a 25 percent tariff on Mexican imports in retaliation for mass migration across southern border.
As he toured natural disaster sites in North Carolina and California on Friday, Trump issued a stern warning to illegal migrants with criminal records, saying: “We’re taking them out first.”
While Mexican authorities have shown their disapproval for the deportations, Trump’s administration has praised their own efforts this week, with new Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, also posting a video of migrants being marched onto the military aircrafts to Guatemala on Thursday.
Credit: Daily Mail Online
