Trump Administration Claims That Spending $140 Million on Jets for Deportations Will Save Money

In its latest splurge, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will spend nearly $140 million on six Boeing 737 planes to deport immigrants. The new DHS planes are intended to cut costs “by allowing ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] to operate more effectively,” Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin told The Washington Post. The planes will be purchased with funding granted by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was signed into law in July and appropriated $170 billion for immigration enforcement. 

Under President Donald Trump, the DHS has been tasked with deporting 1 million people by the end of the year. According to data analyzed by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data gathering, research, and distribution organization at Syracuse University, ICE removed a total of 290,603 immigrants between January 26 and November 15, a 7 percent jump from FY 2024. However, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, told the Post that more than 570,000 removals have already taken place. More than 65,000 immigrants are currently in ICE detention, many of whom pose no threat to public safety.

Faced with record-high detention numbers, the Trump administration has resorted to holding detainees in overcrowded, inhumane conditions and violating their due process rights. Since January, the administration has experimented with controversial ways to alleviate overcrowding issues, such as greenlighting state-run immigration detention centers like Alligator Alcatraz and removing migrants to El Salvador. ICE has also increased the number of chartered flights to transport detainees. Between January and October, ICE Flight Monitor, a project that tracks ICE flights from publicly available aviation data, documented over 10,672 total flights, including transfers to third countries, domestic transfer flights, and removal-related flights, compared to 7,159 flights in 2024. 

Now, the DHS will experiment with owning and operating its own aircraft fleet, which McLaughlin told Fox News will save taxpayers $279 million (although she didn’t provide specifics). But not everyone agrees the move will save money. John Sandweg, the acting director of ICE under President Barack Obama, told the Post he was surprised by the agency’s decision, given that “it’s so much easier to issue a contract to a company that already manages a fleet of airplanes.” 

Up until now, relying on charter flights for immigrant removals and detainee transportations has allowed ICE to increase and decrease flights as needed, people familiar with ICE’s air operations told the Post. By owning, operating, and maintaining its own fleet, ICE will be trading flexible costs for higher overhead costs. Moreover, the investment calls into question what the agency might use the aircraft for in the future should the need for deportation flights decrease. 

The aircraft purchase is yet another addition to the DHS’ arsenal, which includes a growing number of detention facilities, surveillance technology, personnel, and small arms weaponry. The accumulation points to what the Brennan Center for Justice has dubbed an “deportation-industrial complex” that will likely outlast the Trump administration. 

These high-dollar purchases aren’t geared toward saving taxpayer money, but toward increasing immigration deportations, no matter the cost. With more officers, more detention facilities, and more flights, the Trump administration will likely succeed in its goal of ramping up the number of immigrant removals. But without fixing the due process errors running rampant throughout Trump’s mass deportation campaign so far, it will come at the cost of degrading the rights of both immigrants and American citizens.

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