Journey among the deported migrants at the border. Trump shows photos of them chained and loaded onto planes

FORT BLISS (TEXAS). The entrance gates are congested with the constant flow of vehicles coming in and out, a traffic volume beyond normal compared to the already intense daily routine that characterizes this U.S. Army base located in El Paso County, one of the largest. Five days after Donald Trump took office at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and immediately signed executive orders tightening restrictions on illegal immigration, in this 4500 km² area spanning Texas and New Mexico, the fates of very different realities intersect: those arriving and those departing, law and outlaws. The latter are irregular migrants who have committed crimes, criminal offenses deemed worthy of arrest during the first relentless raids by law enforcement, repeatedly announced by Trump during his campaign.

“Promises made, promises kept,” reads a post on the White House’s X profile showing detainees in handcuffs entering the rear door of a C-17 Globemaster III, marking the first deportation of the Trump era—although Barack Obama and Joe Biden had already made significant use of such measures. They called them “repatriations,” a lexical euphemism crafted for politically correct or even “woke” audiences, a matter of political marketing. Trump, by contrast, insists on calling them deportations to leave his “Law & Order” mark. “Deportation flight has begun,” reads the same X post shared by spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt. It refers to the aircraft carrying 80 Guatemalan citizens that took off Thursday at 5 p.m. local time (1 a.m. in Italy) from Biggs Army Airfield in Fort Bliss.

The repatriation operations result from a triangulation of activities involving three departments: Homeland Security, responsible for search and apprehension; the State Department, which manages relations with the governments of destination countries; and the Army, which handles logistics.

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