Buckle up for a bumpy border ride on Donald Air
Jan 27, 2025, 1:13 PM | Updated: 1:38 pm
To say that the first weekend of this Trump presidency was more action-packed than the last six X-Games combined is an understatement. If President Donald Trump had taken up base jumping it couldn’t have involved as much drama and “cliff-hangery” as this weekend did.
It started with immigration raids that, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), led to the nationwide arrest of 539 undocumented migrants on Friday and 286 on Saturday. But since those numbers weren’t anything close to what Trump had in mind, we started hearing reports that ICE had been told to pick up the pace — and start hitting quotas — by arresting more like 1,200 to 1,500 migrants per day.
The Washington Post said that four anonymous sources told the paper that those “…quotas were outlined Saturday in a call with senior ICE officials, who were told that each of the agency’s field offices should make 75 arrests per day and managers would be held accountable for missing those targets.”
ICE didn’t quite hit those numbers on Sunday but they got closer. ICE officials said they picked up almost 1,000 undocumented migrants.
Also Sunday, Colombian President Gustavo Petro refused to accept two flights of deported migrants from the U.S. — at least partly because they were flown in on military planes. (Which, I might add, is good enough for our men and women in uniform.)
“A migrant is not a criminal and must be treated with the dignity that a human being deserves … that is why I returned the U.S. military planes that were carrying Colombian migrants.” And Petro said that he would only accept his citizens back “in civilian planes, without being treated like criminals.”
This was followed by Trump declaring on social media that he was ordering visa restrictions, 25% tariffs on all Colombian incoming goods (which would be raised to 50% in a week) and other retaliatory measures — saying that Petro “jeopardized” national security in the U.S.
That was followed by the president of Colombia threatening to slap a tariff on U.S. goods entering their country. He stood by that threat… for about two hours… before he backed down — realizing what every world leader seems to know: you can’t win when you’re facing off against Donald Trump.
By the way, I flew military many times during my time covering the Iraq War. And while flying into Baghdad sitting on cargo nets in a C-130 isn’t nearly as comfortable as sitting in a seat in a 737 — it wasn’t that bad (although I think that parts of my butt are still numb from that flight).
As bumpy as that ride was, you may want to put your seat and tray table in the upright position for the remainder of the Trump administration.
Arizona Congressman David Schweikert told Ladona Harvey and me on Arizona’s Morning News, “We’re going to see lots of this coming — this type of theater. It’s a combination of trying to deal with what happened over the last four years on our border and… trade relations. Just expect every few days there’s going to be an incident like this.”
Keep those seat belts fastened indeed. And for those who don’t want to face the fact that a much higher percentage of world leaders — than Americans — respect Donald Trump, you might want to take advantage of the drink service offered on this four-year-long flight on Donald Air.