But that’s just the first step [sarcasm acknowledged]. I was watching a video where it was pointed out that using military planes to fly immigrants out of the country and to, say, Colombia, is vastly more expensive than chartering a commercial plane. IIRC, besides all the other costs involved, the C-17 burns fuel 6x faster than a commercial jet like a 737 (I believe that was the comparison).
Trump’s Reliance on Military Planes for Deportations Is Costing Taxpayers
New figures show that the recent deportation flights from the U.S. to Colombia and Guatemala have far exceeded the price of a chartered or even first-class seat on a commercial flight, making the Trump administration’s approach to returning illegal immigrants more than eight times more expensive than previous administrations’ efforts.
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In the first week of Trump’s second term, the Department of Homeland Security reported deporting about 7,300 people of various nationalities.To carry out some of these deportations, the U.S. has deployed C-17 Globemaster III transport planes, which cost an estimated $28,500 per flight hour, a senior U.S. defense official told Newsweek.
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The four deportation flights to Guatemala came at a steep cost. The Guatemalan government confirmed that a C-17 military transport plane landed on Monday with 64 deportees on board.Accounting for the per-hour operating cost, those expenses reached around $4,675 per person—far exceeding the roughly $850 price of a first-class commercial ticket from El Paso to Guatemala City.
In contrast, deportation flights operated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which use Boeing 737 and McDonnell Douglas MD-80 aircraft, cost about $630 per deported.
If Trump wants to deport millions of undocumented immigrants using military planes like the C-17, that’s a lot of expensive jet fuel. I don’t know much about the different fuel type processing. Is aviation fuel refined from a different type of crude than the gas for cars?