JD Vance's Campaign Plane Is Being Used for Migrant Deportation Flights
In its former life, the charter plane with the tail No. N917XA went by the moniker Trump Force Two.
The ubiquitous red, white and blue livery logged thousands of miles last year as the campaign plane of JD Vance, who was elected as President Trump's vice president in November.
But that plane — the same one the campaign offered rides on to entice donors to give money — is now carrying out a much different and clandestine kind of task for the Trump administration.
The Boeing 737 has been chartered more than a dozen times this year by the federal government to deport migrants to several Central American countries, according to public aviation logs and a group that tracks the flights.
The Trump-Vance campaign rode to victory in part on its vow to undertake the largest deportation push in American history. The Trump administration has since expanded the range of people who can be targeted for removal, sped up the deportation process for others and, in some cases, tightened the rules for legal immigrants.
In 2018, during President Trump's first term, the plane was used for at least three deportation flights that took about 360 migrants to El Salvador and Guatemala, according to the Center for Human Rights at the University of Washington. The center obtained the data through a public records request.
A fourth flight, chartered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as part of what is known as its ICE Air program, was used to transfer about 144 migrants between detention centers in the United States.
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