Since taking office again in January, Donald Trump’s administration has deported hundreds on flights to countries in Latin America.
In response to data from Witness on the Border, greater than 600 deportation flights have taken off since Trump’s order earlier this 12 months.
The sheer variety of arrests in America and the increased aggressive tactics by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have sparked outrage amongst Americans and others.
Immigration raids in Los Angeles last month caused intense backlash, causing the town to introduce a curfew and prompting Trump to deploy the National Guard.
Trump was slammed for deporting a lot of these migrants and not using a fair trial, to which he replied: ‘You possibly can’t have a trial for all of those people.
‘Look, we’re getting some very bad people, killers, murderers, drug dealers, really bad people, the mentally unwell, the mentally insane, they emptied out insane asylums into our country, we’re getting them out.
‘And a judge can’t say: ‘No, you might have to have a trial,’” Trump claimed. ‘No, we’re going to have a really dangerous country if we usually are not allowed to do what we’re entitled to do.’
As tensions proceed to boil over, some TikTokers have begun making outlandish claims about where the migrant flights went.
One TikToker said: ‘ICE says they deport people safely, but why
do they use expensive military cargo planes that don’t at all times land?
‘Why are shackled bodies washing up in Europe? Why are
immigrants being taken to countries that aren’t their very own? And why are fake agents abducting immigrants? We want answers.’
Shackled bodies ‘washing up in Europe’
Let’s unpack these claims.
The reference to shackled bodies washing up in Europe – Spain, specifically – are migrants from Algeria, authorities have said.
Police in Majorca opened an investigation to discover the bodies, but say they were likely handcuffed and thrown within the ocean during a ‘confrontation’ onboard.
Decomposition and lack of DNA evidence have made the identification technique of these bodies harder, they are saying.
Claims from TikTokers that these bodies might be the migrants they claim the US are ‘throwing into the ocean’ usually are not only likely false, but in addition implausible.
Even when a body from the Gulf of Mexico were to clean all of the approach to Spain, by the point it reached there, if in any respect, it could have been completely decomposed, eaten by animals or, more likely, already at the underside of the ocean.
There haven’t been reports of shackled bodies found on the shores of Mexico, America, or nearby islands within the Gulf.
Trump’s deportations in numbers
Arrests by ICE have increased 25% since Trump took office.
By the tip of April, an estimated 139,000 migrants had been deported from the USA, in line with the Department of Homeland Security.
Eerie parallels to infamous ‘Death Flights’
There is no such thing as a evidence to suggest the Trump administration is throwing deportees off planes into the ocean.
But it surely has happened before in other countries.
Between 1976 and 1983, hundreds of dissidents under Argentina’s dictatorship disappeared.
A lot of them were murdered in ‘Death Flights’ – that are exactly what they sound like. Tons of of flights took off between 1977 and 1978 alone.
The military would round up dissidents and put them on flights over the ocean, often drugged, and throw them into the ocean.
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