Washington
—
President Donald Trump has vowed to carry out the largest deportation operation in American history, and his administration has been tapping employees from across the government to aid his ambitions of removing a million immigrants a year.
That now includes, for the first time, using Federal Air Marshals to guard some of the thousands of deportation flights operated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement this year.
The Federal Air Marshal Service was created in response to a rise in airplane hijackings in the 1960s and tasked with stopping terrorists after the 9/11 attacks. But since June, some 200 Air Marshals have also been redeployed to provide security on flights filled with detainees in ICE custody, who are being shuffled from detention centers around the US, or deported to a growing number of ICE Air destination countries, according to sources and documents seen by CNN.
