Mexico refuses US military flight deporting migrants, sources say
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U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday floated shuttering the Federal Emergency Management Agency during a trip to disaster areas in North Carolina and California, where he pledged government support and sparred with Democratic officials.
Fresh from assuming office on Monday, Trump's visit showcased a desire to show up early in the two states, hit by a hurricane and massive wildfires, respectively. But he punctured the visits with criticism of FEMA, vowing to sign an executive order to overhaul or eliminate the main federal agency that responds to natural disasters.
"FEMA has turned out to be a disaster," he said during a tour of a North Carolina neighborhood destroyed by September's Hurricane Helene. "I think we recommend that FEMA go away."
Trump accused FEMA of bungling emergency relief efforts there and said he preferred that states be given federal money to handle disasters themselves.
The president has also criticized California's response to the Los Angeles fires, which have caused widespread destruction, but he pledged to work with Governor Gavin Newsom and offered help to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass while visiting the state.
"We're looking to get something completed. And the way you get it completed is to work together to govern the state, and we're going to get it completed. They're going to need a lot of federal help," Trump told reporters after Newsom met him on the tarmac when Air Force One landed later in Los Angeles.
Newsom, a Democrat who has had a tense relationship with the Republican leader, told Trump that California would need his support.
Trump has accused Newsom and Bass of "gross incompetence" and Republican colleagues in Congress have threatened to withhold disaster aid.
During a meeting with California officials, Trump sparred with Bass and another Democratic lawmaker, pressing the mayor to use her emergency powers, let people get back to their properties quickly, and allow them to remove debris on their own. Bass emphasized the importance of safety and the lawmaker, Representative Brad Sherman, praised FEMA's work.
Trump asked Richard Grenell, a former ambassador to Germany, to represent him in the response to the California fires.
WATER FIGHT, FEMA SHUTDOWN?
Trump has previously threatened to withhold aid to California and repeated in North Carolina a false claim that Newsom and other officials refused to provide water from the northern part of the state to fight the fires.
Item 1 of 14 U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump walk with Captain Jeff Brown, Chief of LAFD Station 69 and Jason Hing, Chief Deputy of Emergency Services, Los Angeles Fire Department, as they tour the Pacific Palisades neighborhood that was damaged by the Palisades Fire, in Los Angeles, California, U.S., January 24, 2025. REUTERS/Leah Millis
[1/14]U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump walk with Captain Jeff Brown, Chief of LAFD Station 69 and Jason Hing, Chief Deputy of Emergency Services, Los Angeles Fire Department, as they tour the Pacific Palisades neighborhood that was damaged by the Palisades Fire, in Los Angeles,... Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tabRead more
Water shortages caused some hydrants to run dry in affluent Pacific Palisades, hindering the early response. When the fires broke out, one of the reservoirs that could have supplied more water to the area had been empty for a year. Officials have promised an investigation into why it was dry.
Bass and fire officials have said the hydrants were not designed to deal with such a massive disaster and stressed the unprecedented nature of the fires.
Meanwhile, experts doubt that Trump alone can shut down FEMA.
Rob Verchick, a former Obama administration official at the Environmental Protection Agency and now a professor at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, said eliminating FEMA most likely requires Congressional action.
He said FEMA was created by former President Jimmy Carter by executive order but has been assigned roles and funding by Congress for the country's emergency response programs.
FEMA brings in emergency personnel, supplies ,and equipment to help areas begin to recover from natural disasters. Funding for the agency has soared in recent years as extreme weather events have increased the demand for its services.
The agency has 10 regional offices and employs more than 20,000 people across the country.
FEMA was a target of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for Trump's second term prepared by his allies that the president distanced himself from during the election. The plan called for dismantling the Department of Homeland Security and relocating FEMA to the Department of Interior or the Department of Transportation.
In addition, it suggested changing the formula that the agency uses to determine when federal disaster assistance is warranted, shifting the costs of preventing and responding to disasters to states.
Trump complained that his predecessor Joe Biden did not do enough to help western North Carolina recover from Helene, an accusation the Biden administration rejected as misinformation.
In an X post on Friday, Democratic U.S. Representative Deborah Ross of North Carolina said FEMA had been a crucial partner in the state's recovery from the hurricane.
"I appreciate President Trump's concern about Western NC, but eliminating FEMA would be a disaster for our state," she said.
The trip to North Carolina and California culminates a week during which Trump moved with stunning speed to meet campaign promises on illegal immigration, the size of the federal workforce, energy and the environment, gender and diversity policies, and pardons for supporters jailed for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Less than a week into his presidency, the Trump administration touted deportation efforts and published new rules Friday making it easier to remove people — part of a flurry of actions to make good on campaign promises to crack down on illegal immigration. Amid officials’ latest show of force, waves of worry reverberated in parts of the country, with officials in Newark, New Jersey, lashing out over what they called illegal arrests by immigration agents.
President Donald Trump’s administration portrayed U.S. military planes carrying migrants that touched down in Central America as a start to deportations and announced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement made 593 arrests on Friday and 538 on Thursday. He also sent U.S. soldiers and Marines to the U.S.-Mexico border and lifted longtime rules restricting immigration enforcement near schools and churches.
Many of the ICE actions were not unusual. Similar deportation flights also took place under the Biden administration, though not using military planes. ICE averaged 311 daily arrests in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. President Joe Biden also sent active-duty troops to the border in 2023, and numerous administrations have sent National Guard troops to assist Customs and Border Protection.
However, rumors of arrests and news reports or social media posts about the presence of agents sparked worries in communities around the country. Some rights groups launched plans to protect immigrants in the event of arrests at schools or workplaces. Chicago Public Schools officials on Friday mistakenly believed ICE agents had come to one of their elementary schools and put out statements to that effect before learning the agents were from the Secret Service. It heightened fears among immigrant communities in the country’s third-largest city.
There is widespread support in America for beefing up security at the southern border and undertaking some targeted deportations, particularly of people who committed violent crimes, according to a survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That poll also found that most Americans think local police should cooperate with federal immigration authorities on deportations in at least some cases. But support falls considerably when it comes to deporting people in the country illegally who have not been convicted of a crime.
Newark officials say ICE went too far
Mayor Ras Baraka said ICE agents showed up at a business Thursday for what he called a warrantless raid and detained three “undocumented residents” as well as some U.S. citizens. He said one person was questioned even after showing military identification.
The city is just across the Hudson River from New York, and half of the population of 305,000 is Black and nearly 40% is Hispanic.
“When I got this information I was appalled, upset, angry that this would happen here, in this state, in this country,” Baraka, a Democrat who is seeking the party’s nomination for governor, said at a news conference. “We’re going to fight for all of our residents in this city, no matter what that looks like for us.”
ICE confirmed it had conducted a “targeted enforcement operation” at a Newark business and that some of the people agents encountered were U.S. citizens who were asked for identification. ICE said it could not comment further because the investigation is active.
While Trump has vowed a campaign of mass deportations, his White House border czar has repeatedly said that they will be targeted operations focused initially on specific people who have committed crimes.
Amy Torres, executive director of New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, disputed that what happened Thursday was a targeted approach, saying that type of language suggests “some deep intel and prior investigation.” She said her organization got a call when ICE arrived.
“If this is such a sterile and targeted operation, why was a U.S. citizen interrogated?” Torres said.
She and other officials declined to identify the business, but the owner of Ocean Seafood Depot spoke to reporters, saying the government should go after “bad people, not working people.”
Expanding “expedited removal” authority
The Trump administration said Friday that it was expanding the use of “expedited removal” authority so it can be used across the country starting right away.
“The effect of this change will be to enhance national security and public safety — while reducing government costs — by facilitating prompt immigration determinations,” the administration said in a notice in the Federal Register outlining the new rules.
“Expedited removal” gives enforcement agencies broad authority to deport people without requiring them to appear before an immigration judge. There are limited exceptions, including if they express fear of returning home and pass an initial screening interview for asylum.
Critics have said there’s too much risk that people who have the right to be in the country will be mistakenly swept up by agents and officers and that not enough is done to protect migrants who have genuine reason to fear being sent home. Friday’s notice said the person put into expedited removal “bears the affirmative burden to show to the satisfaction of an immigration officer” that they have the right to be in the U.S.
The powers were created under a 1996 law. But they weren’t really widely used until 2004 when Homeland Security said it would use expedited removal authority for people arrested within two weeks of entering the U.S. by land and caught within 100 miles (160 kilometers) of the border. That meant it was used mostly against migrants who recently arrived.
Using military planes to carry out deportations
The Trump administration is also relying on the active-duty military to help secure the border and carry out deportations. After sending about 1,500 troops to San Diego and El Paso, two Air Force C-17 cargo planes carrying migrants removed from the country touched down early Friday morning in Guatemala.
Honduras received two deportation flights Friday carrying a total of 193 people, the Foreign Ministry confirmed.
However, officials underscored that this was normal. Antonio GarcÃa, vice foreign minister of Honduras, said the government has an agreement with the U.S. to accept between eight and 10 flights a week.
“The big question is how many more flights they will ask us to take,” he told the AP. “We will hear them out and we want them to hear our plans and concerns.”
U.S. President Donald Trump's administration fired the independent inspectors general of more than a dozen major government agencies late on Friday, U.S. media reported.
The agencies include the departments of defense, state, transportation, veterans affairs, housing and urban development, interior, and energy, Washington Post said, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter.
The New York Times said the purge affected 17 agencies but spared the Department of Justice inspector general, Michael Horowitz.
The Post said the firings "appeared to violate federal law, which requires Congress to receive 30 days’ notice of any intent to fire the inspectors general."
The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the reports.
An inspector general is an independent position that conducts audits, investigations, and inspectors into allegations of waste, fraud, and abuse. They can be removed by the president or the agency head, depending on who nominated or appointed them.
Most of those dismissed were appointees from Trump's 2017-2021 first term, the Post reported, saying those affected had been notified by emails from the White House personnel director that they had been terminated effective immediately.
President Donald Trump on Friday used his executive authority to restore U.S. participation in two international anti-abortion pacts, including one that cuts off U.S. family planning funds for foreign organizations if they provide or promote abortions.
Trump reinstated the Mexico City Policy, which opponents call the "global gag rule" because they say it silences abortion advocates. Established by former President Ronald Reagan in 1984, it has been rescinded by each Democratic president since then and reinstated when a Republican returns to the White House.
Abortion is a divisive issue in U.S. politics and was a major issue in the 2024 campaign won by Trump. In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to eliminate a nationwide right to abortion, leaving abortion laws to each of the 50 states.
Trump said in his memorandum on Friday he was directing Secretary of State Marco Rubio to implement the Mexico City Policy "to ensure that U.S. taxpayer dollars do not fund organizations or programs that support or participate in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization."
Democrats and abortion rights advocates contend the rule disrupts other forms of healthcare access and blocks nongovernmental organizations abroad from receiving U.S. funds, even if they use their own money on abortion care.
Janeen Madan Keller, a policy fellow at the Center for Global Development, said research showed, opens a new tab that the "gag order" has led to an increase in unwanted pregnancies and abortions, counter to its intended impact.
"Broadly speaking these decisions are going to really set the United States back in advancing gender equality," Madan Keller said, in part by limiting the ability of women and girls to complete school and enter the workforce.
Rubio also announced on Friday the United States was rejoining the Geneva Consensus Declaration, which critics say aims to limit abortion access for millions of women and girls around the world.
The declaration was co-sponsored by the United States, Brazil, Uganda, Egypt, Hungary, and Indonesia in 2020, when Trump was in office during his first term. It now has more than 35 signatories.
The previous Trump administration said the declaration sought better healthcare for women and the preservation of human life, while also strengthening the family as the foundational unit of society and protecting each nation's sovereignty.
The State Department said on Friday that one of the four objectives of the pact was to "protect life at all stages."
Trump also issued an executive order related to the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the use of federal funds to pay for abortion coverage in the United States, and rescinded two of predecessor Joe Biden's executive orders intending to preserve reproductive health services after the Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade ruling on abortion.
"While this EO (executive order) has no immediate impact, it is an indication of the Trump administration doubling down on denying abortion access to people with low incomes," the women's healthcare provider Planned Parenthood said in a statement.
Mexico has refused a request from PresidentDonald Trump's administration to allow a U.S. military aircraft deporting migrants to land in the country, a U.S. official and a Mexican official told Reuters.
U.S. military aircraft carried out two similar flights, each with about 80 migrants, to Guatemala on Friday. The government was not able to move ahead with a plan to have a C-17 transport aircraft land in Mexico, however, after the country denied permission.
A U.S. official and a Mexican official confirmed the decision, which was first reported by NBC News.
Mexico's foreign ministry, in a statement late on Friday, said the country had a "very great relationship" with the U.S. and cooperated on issues such as immigration.
"When it comes to repatriations, we will always accept the arrival of Mexicans to our territory with open arms," the ministry said.
The Mexican official did not give a reason for the denial of permission to land, while the foreign ministry did not mention the incident.
Trump's administration earlier this week announced it was re-launching the program known as "Remain in Mexico," which forced non-Mexican asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until their cases in the United States were resolved.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Wednesday such a move would require the country receiving the asylum-seekers to agree, and that Mexico had not done so.
The U.S. State Department and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
U.S.-Mexico relations have come into sharp focus since Trump started his second term on Monday with the declaration of a national emergency along the two nations' shared border. He has ordered 1,500 additional U.S. troops there so far, and officials have said thousands more could deploy soon.
The president has declared Mexican drug cartels terrorist organizations, renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, and threatened an across-the-board 25% duty on Mexican goods beginning in February.
Sheinbaum has sought to avoid escalating the situation and expressed openness toward accommodating Mexican nationals who are returned.
But the leftist leader has also said she does not agree with mass deportations and that Mexican immigrants are vital to the U.S. economy.
The use of U.S. military aircraft to carry out deportation flights is part of the Pentagon's response to Trump's national emergency declaration on Monday.
In the past, U.S. military aircraft have been used to relocate individuals from one country to another, like during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
This was the first time in recent memory that U.S. military aircraft were used to fly migrants out of the country, one U.S. official said.
The Pentagon has said that the U.S. military would provide flights to deport more than 5,000 immigrants held by U.S. authorities in El Paso, Texas, and San Diego, California.
Guatemala also on Friday received a third flight of about 80 deported migrants on a chartered commercial aircraft, Guatemalan authorities told Reuters.
The U.S. State Department issued a "stop-work" order on Friday for all existing foreign assistance and paused new aid, according to a cable seen by Reuters, after President Donald Trump ordered a pause to review if aid allocation was aligned with his foreign policy.
The cable, drafted by the Department's foreign assistance office and approved by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, said waivers have been issued for military financing for Israel and Egypt. No other countries were mentioned in the cable.
The move risks cutting off billions of dollars of life-saving assistance. The United States is the largest single donor of aid globally - in fiscal year 2023, it disbursed $72 billion in assistance.
Just hours after taking office on Monday, Trump ordered a 90-day pause in foreign development assistance pending a review of efficiencies and consistency with his foreign policy but the scope of the order was not immediately known.
The State Department cable said effective immediately, senior officials "shall ensure that, to the maximum extent permitted by law, no new obligations shall be made for foreign assistance" until Rubio has made a decision after a review.
It says that for existing foreign assistance awards stop-work orders shall be issued immediately until reviewed by Rubio.
"This is lunacy," Jeremy Konyndyk, a former USAID official who is now president of Refugees International, said. "This will kill people. I mean, if implemented as written in that cable ... a lot of people will die."
"There's no way to consider this as a good-faith attempt to sincerely review the effectiveness of foreign assistance programming. This is just simply a wrecking ball to break as much stuff as possible," Konyndyk said.
Trump's order is unlawful, argued a source familiar with discussions in Congress on the move.
"Freezing these international investments will lead our international partners to seek other funding partners - likely U.S. competitors and adversaries - to fill this hole and displace the United States' influence the longer this unlawful impoundment continues," the source said on condition of anonymity.
WAIVERS
A USAID official, who requested anonymity, said officers responsible for projects in Ukraine have been told to stop all work. Among the projects that have been frozen are support to schools and health assistance like emergency maternal care and childhood vaccinations, the official said.
Across the board, "decisions, whether to continue, modify, or terminate programs, will be made" by Rubio following a review over the next 85 days. Until then Rubio can approve waivers.
Rubio has issued a waiver for emergency food assistance, according to the cable. This comes amid a surge of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip after a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas began on Sunday and several other hunger crises around the world, including Sudan.
But Konyndyk said emergency food assistance was just a minority of all humanitarian assistance, adding that nutrition, health, and vaccination programs will have to stop, as would relief aid to Gaza and Syria as well as services to refugee camps in Sudan.
"It's manufactured chaos," said a former senior official with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), speaking on condition of anonymity.
"Organizations will have to stop all activities, so all lifesaving health services, HIV/AIDS, nutrition, maternal and child health, all agriculture work, all support of civil society organizations, education," said the official.
The State Department cable also said waivers have so far been approved by Rubio for "foreign military financing for Israel and Egypt and administrative expenses, including salaries, necessary to administer foreign military financing."
Israel receives about $3.3 billion in foreign military financing annually, while Egypt receives about $1.3 billion
Other states identified for such financing in 2025 include Ukraine, Georgia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Djibouti, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, Israel, Egypt, and Jordan, according to a request to Congress from former President Joe Biden's administration.
That request also said foreign military financing would "also seek to bolster the Lebanese Armed Forces' ability to mitigate instability and counter malign Iranian influence."
The Lebanese military is currently trying to deploy into the south of the country as Israeli troops withdraw under a ceasefire deal that requires Iran-backed Hezbollah weapons and fighters to also be removed from the area.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials have ordered what amounts to a pause in several programs that allow immigrants to settle temporarily in the United States, the New York Times reported on Friday.
The directive demands an immediate end to "final decisions" on certain visa applications pending a review by the Trump administration about whether to cancel the programs permanently, the Times reported, citing an email sent by the top official at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The programs offer possible entry for a large number of immigrants from an array of countries, including war-torn Ukraine and others dealing with political upheaval or extreme poverty.
President Donald Trump, on his first day in office on Monday, issued a series of executive orders intended to deter illegal immigration and position the U.S. to deport millions of immigrants without legal status.
The Trump administration is pushing ahead with efforts to ramp up immigration enforcement, opening up the possibility of targeting migrants who entered through Biden-era programs and invoking an obscure immigration statute to make it easier to deputize state and local law enforcement to arrest and detain immigrants in the U.S. illegally.
One terminated program had allowed migrants waiting in Mexico to schedule an appointment to request asylum at a legal border crossing. Another allowed Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans outside the U.S. to enter by air if they had U.S. sponsors and undergone vetting.
