The Trump administration began its promised deportations of illegal immigrants this week, but senior Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said Friday that more aircraft are needed to speed up the process. It's less costly than what Biden spent keeping them here.

     Miller told reporters that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had been hampered in its ability to deport illegal migrants because of a lack of aircraft and the administration is trying to secure enough planes from half a dozen sources, per Bloomberg.  ICE raids took place as White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt released photos of people boarding C-17s, announcing that "deportation flights had begun,". One of the photos was taken at Biggs Army Airfield at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, U.S. and it was one of two flights that had departed for Guatemala.

      Customs and Border Protection sources told Fox News the plane in the image had 80 people. A third flight, bound for Mexico, never took off after Mexico declined to consent to the landing, a State Department official told Fox News.  But Miller suggested the administration was looking to scale up the operations and was looking into sourcing aircraft including from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Defense (DOD) to do so.  "You have obviously DHS air assets, you have DOD air assets, you have State Department air assets, you have commercial air assets, you have charter air assets, so every asset that can be used to conduct a lawful deportation," Miller said, per Bloomberg. 

     "Border czar" Tom Homan told ABC News that the administration will use military aircraft every day to help carry out the operation. Around 2,000 illegal immigrants were deported to Mexico, both on the ground and in the air. In addition, Mexico detained roughly 5,000 migrants within its border.