Neil Vigdor
May 29,
2025, 8:45 p.m. ET4 hours ago
Neil Vigdor
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/05/29/us/trump-news
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.
The
repurposing of Mr. Vance’s former campaign plane for migrant deportation
flights was first reported by The Arizona Mirror. The publication tallied an
additional 35 flights made by the plane in 2020 between ICE hubs in the United
States and Central and South American countries.
It was not
clear whether Mr. Vance, who represented Ohio in the Senate before being
elected vice president, was aware of the plane’s history.
A spokesman
for the vice president’s office did not immediately respond to a request for
comment on Thursday.
The
Department of Homeland Security, which ICE is part of, declined to comment on
the specific plane, citing security concerns.
“ICE uses
subcontractors to help carry out its mission to deport illegal aliens,” the
department said in a statement. “These subcontractors are not exclusive to
ICE.”
The plane,
which is about 22 years old, is registered to Eastern 737 Asset Holdings L.L.C.
in Kansas City, Mo., according to a Federal Aviation Administration registry.
The company did not respond to a request for comment.
From
mid-April through May 24 of this year, the plane was chartered for 16
deportation flights to Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, according
to Tom Cartwright, an immigrant rights advocate and a volunteer for the group
Witness at the Border. The flight data was verified by The New York Times.
Soon after
Mr. Trump chose Mr. Vance as his running mate last July, the plane became a
mainstay on the trail, ferrying the future vice president and an entourage of
handlers and journalists between Washington and battleground states.
Last August,
the plane had to make an emergency landing in Milwaukee shortly after takeoff
because of a door malfunction. The flight returned to Milwaukee Mitchell
International Airport, where the problem was quickly resolved before it
continued to Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.
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