UPDATE 2-Repatriation of Mexican deportees to interior begins with first U.S. flight

The U.S. government began sending Mexican deportees to the interior of Mexico on Thursday, starting with a flight to the city of Guadalajara, U.S. and Mexican officials said, in the latest step by both nations to restrict migration flows.

The senior official from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Mexican government official declined to be identified because they were not authorized to talk to the media. The flight was expected to reach Guadalajara later on Thursday morning, and one shelter in the city said it had been informed of a likely influx of deportees. The Mexican Foreign ministry and DHS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

U.S. President Donald Trump has made clamping down on unlawful migration a top priority of his three-year-old term in office and his looming 2020 reelection campaign. He has pressured the Mexican and Central American governments to better patrol their borders to thwart migrants as well as having those petitioning for U.S. asylum protections to wait for court dates outside the United States, or seek refuge elsewhere.

In recent years, Central American migrants and asylum-seekers have comprised a large percentage of deportees. Mexicans sent back to their country have usually been returned to U.S.-Mexico border crossings. A program to send Mexican deportees to the interior also operated from 2013, with the goal of reducing multiple attempts to cross and lessening the risk of deportees being affected by border crime.

Despite the surge in the number of Central American immigrants in recent years, and the decline in the number of Mexicans, more Mexican single adults are still apprehended at the border than Central Americans, U.S. Customs and Border Protection data show. Almost 150,000 Mexican single adults were apprehended at the U.S. border in fiscal 2019, the data show. The number of Mexican families apprehended rose to 6,000, a fraction of the total for Central American families.