GUATEMALA CITY: US military planes carrying dozens of expelled migrants arrived in Guatemala, authorities said Friday, as President Donald Trump moved to crack down on illegal immigration.
A total of 265 Guatemalans arrived on three flights — two operated by the military, and one a charter, the Central American country’s migration institute said, updating earlier figures.
Washington also sent four deportation flights to Mexico on Thursday, the White House press secretary said on X, despite multiple US media reports that authorities there had turned at least one plane back.
The Mexican government has not confirmed either the arrival of flights or any agreement to receive a specific number of planes with deportees.
But Mexico’s foreign ministry said Friday it was ready to work with Washington over the deportation of its citizens, saying the country would “always accept the arrival of Mexicans to our territory with open arms.”
The flights came as the White House said it had arrested more than a thousand people in two days with hundreds deported by military aircraft, saying that “the largest massive deportation operation in history is well underway.”
Some 538 illegal immigrant “criminals” were arrested Thursday, it said, followed by another 593 on Friday.
By comparison, under Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden deportation flights were carried out regularly, with a total of 270,000 deportations in 2024 — a 10-year record — and 113,400 arrests, making an average of 310 per day.
The Guatemalan government did not confirm whether any of the migrants arrested this week were among the deportees that arrived Friday.
“These are flights that took place after Trump took office,” an official in the Guatemalan vice president’s office said.
A Pentagon source said that “overnight, two DOD (Department of Defense) aircraft conducted repatriation flights from the US to Guatemala.”
Early Friday the White House posted an image on X of men in shackles being marched into a military aircraft, with the caption: “Deportation flights have begun.”
And Trump told reporters that the flights were to get “the bad, hard criminals out.”
“Murderers, people that have been as bad as you get. As bad as anybody you’ve seen,” he said.
Friday’s deportees were taken to a reception center at an air force base in Guatemala’s capital, away from the media.
Trump promised a crackdown on illegal immigration during the election campaign and began his second term with a flurry of executive actions aimed at overhauling entry to the United States.
On his first day in office he signed orders declaring a “national emergency” at the southern border and announced the deployment of more troops to the area while vowing to deport “criminal aliens.”
His administration said it would also reinstate a “Remain in Mexico” policy under which people who apply to enter the United States from Mexico must remain there until their application has been decided.
The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said Friday on X that program had been reinstated, and that Mexico had deployed some 30,000 National Guard troops to its border.
The Mexican foreign ministry did not confirm either claim in its statement.
The White House has also halted an asylum program for people fleeing authoritarian regimes in Central and South America, leaving thousands of people stranded on the Mexican side of the border.
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US migrant deportation flights arrive in Latin America
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US migrant deportation flights arrive in Latin America
- A total of 265 Guatemalans arrived on three flights – two operated by the military, and one a charter
- Donald Trump promised a crackdown on illegal immigration during the election campaign
Reddit challenges Australia’s world-first law banning children under 16 from social media
- Reddit’s suit filed in the High Court follows a case filed last month by Sydney-based rights group Digital Freedom Project
- Australia’s world-first law that bans Australian children younger than 16 from holding social media accounts
MELBOURNE: Global online forum Reddit on Friday filed a court challenge to Australia’s world-first law that bans Australian children younger than 16 from holding accounts on the world’s most popular social media platforms.
California-based Reddit Inc.’s suit filed in the High Court follows a case filed last month by Sydney-based rights group Digital Freedom Project.
Both suits claim the law is unconstitutional because it infringes on Australia’s implied freedom of political communication.
“We believe there are more effective ways for the Australian government to accomplish our shared goal of protecting youth, and the SMMA (Social Media Minimum Age) law carries some serious privacy and political expression issues for everyone on the Internet,” Reddit said in a statement.
“While we agree with the importance of protecting people under 16, this law has the unfortunate effect of forcing intrusive and potentially insecure verification processes on adults as well as minors, isolating teens from the ability to engage in age-appropriate community experiences (including political discussions), and creating an illogical patchwork of which platforms are included and which aren’t,” Reddit added.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government declined to comment on the merits of Reddit’s challenge.
“The Albanese government is on the side of Australian parents and kids, not platforms,” a government statement said.
“We will stand firm to protect young Australians from experiencing harm on social media. The matter is before the courts so it is not appropriate to comment further,” the statement added.
Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X, YouTube and Twitch face fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars ($32.9 million) from Wednesday if they fail to take reasonable steps to remove the accounts of Australian children younger than 16.
Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, the law’s enforcer, sent compulsory information notices to the 10 age-restricted platforms on Thursday demanding data on how many accounts of young children they had deactivated since the law took effect on Wednesday.
Inman Grant had predicted that some platforms might have been waiting to receive their first notice or their first fine for noncompliance before mounting a legal challenge.
ESafety will send six monthly notices to gauge how effectively the platforms are complying.
Despite the court challenge, Reddit said it would comply with the law and would continue to engage with eSafety.
Australian children are searching for alternatives to the age-restricted platforms. Downloads of Yope, an app for sharing photos within friend groups, increased by 251 percent since Monday, according to Apptopia, an intelligence platform analyzing mobile apps.
Downloads of Lemon8 — a photo- and video-sharing app which, like TikTok, was created by ByteDance — increased by 88 percent.
ESafety said it has written to Yope, Lemon8 and other smaller apps to ask them to self-assess whether they meet the definition of an age-restricted platform. If they do, they also face fines if they don’t exclude young children.
Experts say policing age restrictions in the rapidly evolving social media landscape is like a game of Whack-a-Mole. But government authorities expect a more fragmented social media marketplace would not appeal as strongly to young children who fear exclusion from their peers and missing out.
The platforms’ age-verification options were to ask for copies of identification documents, use a third party to apply age-estimation technology to analyze an account holder’s face, or make inferences from data already available, such has how long an account has been held.
The government hasn’t told the platforms how to check ages, but has said requesting all account holders verify their ages would be unnecessarily intrusive, given the tech giants already have sufficient personal data on most people to perform that task.
For privacy reasons, the platforms also cannot compel users to provide government-issued identification.
Documents filed with the court registry show Reddit will ask the seven High Court judges to rule the law is invalid.
Alternatively, the company wants the court to prevent the government from listing Reddit among the age-restricted platforms.
The High Court will hold a preliminary hearing in late February to set a date for Digital Freedom Project’s challenge on behalf of two 15-year-olds. It is not yet clear whether the two challenges would be heard together.
California-based Reddit Inc.’s suit filed in the High Court follows a case filed last month by Sydney-based rights group Digital Freedom Project.
Both suits claim the law is unconstitutional because it infringes on Australia’s implied freedom of political communication.
“We believe there are more effective ways for the Australian government to accomplish our shared goal of protecting youth, and the SMMA (Social Media Minimum Age) law carries some serious privacy and political expression issues for everyone on the Internet,” Reddit said in a statement.
“While we agree with the importance of protecting people under 16, this law has the unfortunate effect of forcing intrusive and potentially insecure verification processes on adults as well as minors, isolating teens from the ability to engage in age-appropriate community experiences (including political discussions), and creating an illogical patchwork of which platforms are included and which aren’t,” Reddit added.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government declined to comment on the merits of Reddit’s challenge.
“The Albanese government is on the side of Australian parents and kids, not platforms,” a government statement said.
“We will stand firm to protect young Australians from experiencing harm on social media. The matter is before the courts so it is not appropriate to comment further,” the statement added.
Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X, YouTube and Twitch face fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars ($32.9 million) from Wednesday if they fail to take reasonable steps to remove the accounts of Australian children younger than 16.
Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, the law’s enforcer, sent compulsory information notices to the 10 age-restricted platforms on Thursday demanding data on how many accounts of young children they had deactivated since the law took effect on Wednesday.
Inman Grant had predicted that some platforms might have been waiting to receive their first notice or their first fine for noncompliance before mounting a legal challenge.
ESafety will send six monthly notices to gauge how effectively the platforms are complying.
Despite the court challenge, Reddit said it would comply with the law and would continue to engage with eSafety.
Australian children are searching for alternatives to the age-restricted platforms. Downloads of Yope, an app for sharing photos within friend groups, increased by 251 percent since Monday, according to Apptopia, an intelligence platform analyzing mobile apps.
Downloads of Lemon8 — a photo- and video-sharing app which, like TikTok, was created by ByteDance — increased by 88 percent.
ESafety said it has written to Yope, Lemon8 and other smaller apps to ask them to self-assess whether they meet the definition of an age-restricted platform. If they do, they also face fines if they don’t exclude young children.
Experts say policing age restrictions in the rapidly evolving social media landscape is like a game of Whack-a-Mole. But government authorities expect a more fragmented social media marketplace would not appeal as strongly to young children who fear exclusion from their peers and missing out.
The platforms’ age-verification options were to ask for copies of identification documents, use a third party to apply age-estimation technology to analyze an account holder’s face, or make inferences from data already available, such has how long an account has been held.
The government hasn’t told the platforms how to check ages, but has said requesting all account holders verify their ages would be unnecessarily intrusive, given the tech giants already have sufficient personal data on most people to perform that task.
For privacy reasons, the platforms also cannot compel users to provide government-issued identification.
Documents filed with the court registry show Reddit will ask the seven High Court judges to rule the law is invalid.
Alternatively, the company wants the court to prevent the government from listing Reddit among the age-restricted platforms.
The High Court will hold a preliminary hearing in late February to set a date for Digital Freedom Project’s challenge on behalf of two 15-year-olds. It is not yet clear whether the two challenges would be heard together.
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