Trump sends second deportation flight to Haiti as ICE kidnaps nearly 50,000 in July
The Trump administration sent 57 people to Haiti aboard a deportation flight Thursday, including several children born in the United States and Brazil, as it accelerates the mass expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Haitians stripped of Temporary Protected Status.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement charter landed in Cap-Haitien, Haiti’s second-largest city, rather than the capital of Port-au-Prince. Federal Aviation Administration restrictions prohibit most US civil aviation operations below 10,000 feet around the capital because armed groups have repeatedly fired on aircraft. At least three aircraft have been attacked with small-arms fire in the restricted area since September 2025.
The youngest person aboard was a 1-year-old born in the United States and therefore a US citizen. The child was among several US-born children effectively expelled from their own country alongside parents targeted by the immigration Gestapo.
The child’s parents told the Miami Herald that it was “scandalous” that children born in the United States were being forced to go to Haiti.
Thursday’s flight was the second from the United States to Haiti in seven days. Last Thursday, 161 people were sent to the impoverished Caribbean nation, including individuals who had never lived there and were designated Haitian solely through their parentage. Many concealed their faces after leaving the plane out of fear that they or their relatives could be identified and targeted by armed gangs.
Until now, US deportation flights to Haiti had occurred roughly once a month. Documents obtained by the New York Times show that the Trump administration plans to begin operating them weekly in order to “more quickly expel thousands of Haitians” whose legal status was eliminated this summer.
More than 300,000 Haitians were previously enrolled in TPS, the humanitarian program that allowed them to live and work legally in the United States. Since returning to office, the Trump administration has terminated or moved to terminate TPS for 13 countries, threatening approximately 1.045 million people who had been legally permitted to live and work in the United States.
The countries stripped of TPS include Yemen, Venezuela and Afghanistan, all of which have been attacked by the US military or Central Intelligence Agency this year. The administration has also terminated TPS designations for Cameroon, Honduras, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, South Sudan and Syria. Announced terminations for Ethiopia and Somalia have been temporarily halted by ongoing litigation.
Newly released federal data obtained by the Deportation Data Project confirm that ICE kidnapped 49,571 people in July, the highest monthly total of Trump’s second term and a 15 percent increase over June. A majority of those arrested, 51 percent, had neither a criminal conviction nor a pending charge. Only about 4 percent had previously been convicted of a violent crime.
The same data show that nearly 34,000 people were deported during July, an average of approximately 1,100 every day. Rather than retreating after the mass opposition provoked by its murderous occupation of Minneapolis, the administration has shifted toward less visible arrests at traffic stops, immigration appointments, airports and workplaces. Local police increasingly carry out these kidnappings through the rapidly expanding 287(g) program.
An analysis of the data by the New York Times found that kidnappings increased in virtually every state, with the highest numbers recorded in Texas and Florida. ICE kidnapped more than 380 people in Texas and more than 230 in Florida every day.
August also appears likely to record tens of thousands of arrests. While nationwide figures have not been released, Fox News reported Monday, citing ICE officials, that the agency kidnapped 1,328 immigrants in the Washington D.C. suburbs over a two-week period from August 1 through August 14. The arrests were carried out in Virginia and Maryland. More than 900 of those taken had neither a criminal conviction nor pending charges.
In a statement on “Operation Safe Community-Washington, D.C.,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin declared, “While sanctuary politicians in Virginia and Maryland keep putting the needs of illegal aliens over the safety of the American people, the Trump Administration will always put American citizens first.”
“By arresting and removing illegal aliens from our communities, we will make America safe again,” Mullin added.
The state violence concealed behind these figures has already produced a mounting death toll. Two of the states with the highest numbers of ICE arrests were also the sites of recent immigration-related killings by federal officials.
On July 7, an as-yet unidentified ICE thug murdered father and construction worker Lorenzo Salgado Araujo as he was traveling to work in Houston, Texas. One week later in Florida, Juan Jairo Coronilla Durán, a Mexican father and husband who had legally entered the United States on a valid tourist visa, was struck and killed by a tractor-trailer while fleeing an ICE operation in St. Augustine.
As of this writing, the agent who killed Salgado Araujo has not been identified, much less charged with a crime. This is the “absolute immunity” Vice President JD Vance claimed for federal immigration agents after the January 7 murder of Rene Good in Minneapolis. Just over two weeks later, Customs and Border Protection agents murdered Alex Pretti in the same city.
The protection extended to ICE thugs was further underscored Thursday by the release of agent Christian Castro from the Cameron County jail in Texas. Castro faces Minnesota state charges stemming from his false testimony and violent actions during the federal occupation of Minneapolis.
On January 14, Castro fired through the closed front door of a Minneapolis home, striking Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in the leg. The bullet passed through the door, crossed the foyer and came to rest in the wall of a child’s bedroom. Six people, including two children, were inside.
Castro falsely claimed that Sosa-Celis and others had attacked him with a broom and snow shovel. Video footage, physical evidence and witness testimony contradicted his account. He now faces four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime.
Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott has refused to sign an extradition warrant requested by Minnesota Democratic Governor Tim Walz. A federal judge rejected Minnesota’s attempt to compel Abbott to act, ruling that the case was not yet ripe because Abbott had not formally denied the request and federal law imposed no deadline for him to decide. Texas law required Castro’s release after he had been detained for 90 days without being extradited.
The Castro case is a classic example of class justice. Immigrants and even US citizens who have committed no crime are violently assaulted, kidnapped, imprisoned for months or gunned down in the streets. The agents responsible for these crimes are shielded from accountability. Even in the exceptional case in which an agent faces state charges supported by overwhelming evidence, the political and judicial apparatus intervenes to set him free.
That Trump’s immigration Gestapo continues to operate so freely is entirely the responsibility of the Democratic Party and trade union apparatus. Democratic officials, including Walz in Minnesota, have collaborated with the federal government, deploying local police and National Guard forces to protect federal agents and facilities.
At the same time, the trade union bureaucracies, especially in Minnesota, have intervened to prevent strike action. They have warned workers who participate in militant action against ICE that the unions will not defend them because of the sanctity of “no-strike” clauses. These clauses were negotiated and accepted by the bureaucracies themselves, which now use them as a legal pretext to posture as opponents of Trump and the corporations while suppressing any action that would advance the interests of workers.
The fight against the mass deportation operation and the emerging presidential dictatorship cannot be entrusted to the Democratic Party, the courts or the union apparatus. It requires the independent mobilization of the working class through rank-and-file committees and the preparation of nationwide strike action to halt the raids, free those imprisoned in immigration concentration camps and abolish ICE and Customs and Border Protection.