Speaker 1: New images coming into CNN, shedding light on the speed of President Trump implementing his immigration agenda. The White House has just released these images, migrants lined up, handcuffed and led onto a military aircraft. We should note, CNN cannot independently confirm the details because our crews were not there on the ground when these images were being captured. CNN White House correspondent Priscilla Alvarez is here to talk about this. Priscilla, what are we learning about these flights? And we should note, we were just showing this a few moments ago, those images were tweeted out or posted by the White House press secretary. So this is coming from the White House.

Speaker 2: That's right. This is part of their show of force after the president signed his executive order declaring a national emergency at the U.S. southern border. Now, if we can bring the photos up again because I do want to point out what's different here. It is the use of military aircraft that marks a difference from the way this was handled before. Now, you see there are a line of migrants. They are arrested or rather they are handcuffed as they are boarding the plane. That part of this is actually quite typical when it comes to immigration and customs enforcement and the way that they would board one of their deportation flights. But again, what is notable in this image is that military aircraft. Now, I am getting some details from a homeland security official who tells me that it was about 75 to 80 migrants from Guatemala and they were bound for Guatemala. And we are now getting updates from an organization on the ground in Guatemala that is putting out stills of these arrivals. So this story is quickly developing. But in addition to that, we also know they were recent border crossers. So they were in border patrol custody and they were in the El Paso sector. Now, the Pentagon has said that they were sending this military aircraft to El Paso and to San Diego. So we'll see if more of these flights continue. But Jim, just to broaden this out a little bit, the situation at the U.S. southern border is relatively quiet. It's far more than it was even over the last several months. So about 1,100 to 1,300 people crossing a day versus the 4,000, 6,000 and up that we were seeing in recent years. So this is an effort to really clamp down on the U.S. southern border, even as border crossings where they are right now are lower than they were in recent years.

Speaker 1: Interesting. All right. Priscilla, stay with me. I want to bring in CNN contributor and New York Times journalist Lulu Garcia Navarro. Lulu, good to see you. Your reaction to seeing these photos from the White House, they say, that are military planes deployed for these deportations. And I guess one of the things that we should talk about, shouldn't the White House or the administration be giving some kind of access to independent journalists so we can witness this firsthand as opposed to getting these takeouts from the White House?

Speaker 3: I mean, I think press access for this is going to be very important. But I think we also need to really try and get context to understand what is happening and what is different than what we are seeing before. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, came out with a statement that said that they had arrested 538 people yesterday. And that is about double what we have seen previously. So, indeed, we are now seeing stepped up enforcement. There has been some allegations that they are going into private places and not using warrants. That is illegal. So, again, is that different? What are we seeing that is actually different? And that's going to be the thing that's going to tell us if this is actually effective, who they're targeting and where are they targeting people. One of the concerns about this is that they're really going to be targeting people in blue cities and blue states. That is different than what we saw during the first Trump administration where they were doing raids in North Dakota and red states and rural areas. This seems to be targeted in places that are blue states. So, what does that tell us? Does that tell us that this is politically motivated, that they're trying to instill fear in immigrant communities in blue areas as opposed to red areas? You know, all of these things as we're looking at this enforcement operation, we have to really think about what it means and what is the administration actually trying to achieve.

Speaker 1: Yeah, we're going to be talking about what took place in Newark, New Jersey in just a few moments. But, Lulu, I do want to ask you, the president has ordered the Pentagon to surge 1,500 active military troops to the southern border. We're also seeing these new images of military support away from the border. These are from Camp Pendleton in California. These are from New Mexico. Some other images we can show you. We're also learning that more soldiers are preparing for possible deployment to the border. And so, I mean, Lulu, this is something that, you know, is a bit of a departure from what we've seen in the past in that this is a very militarized-looking deportation operation, mass deportation operation. What do you think?

Speaker 3: I mean, this is very unusual. This is not the purview of the United States military. They don't have the training for it. But this is what the Trump administration is doing to try and bolster their capacity to deport people because they haven't gotten more money from Congress for this. They don't have more ICE agents, and so they're trying to pull in other agencies to get involved in this deportation operation. But this is where I think the Trump administration has to be careful because, you know, recent polling shows that there's overwhelming support for deportation of illegal immigrants, immigrants that are here that don't have documentation. There is overwhelming support for deporting immigrants who have criminal convictions. But there is not overwhelming support for using the U.S. military. You know, 62% of Americans oppose separating families, something that the administration says that they're going to do. Fifty-nine percent are against using the U.S. military. And so, you know, this is not popular with the American people, so they have to be careful.

Speaker 1: Yeah, and Priscilla, you were just saying a few moments ago that the numbers are down right now. So, I mean, I guess just to be a skeptic here, couldn't somebody ask the question, well, why not just use ICE resources here? Is the military being used here as part of a shock-and-awe sort of propaganda campaign?

Speaker 2: Well, to Lulu's point, we have to identify what's different. And the U.S. military on the U.S. southern border is not different. There are already 2,200 active-duty troops who are helping support the border mission. And now it's more of a numbers game. So sending more resources down to the U.S. southern border, our understanding is they don't have law enforcement authority. So what they're doing is a lot of assistance when it comes to operational readiness, augmenting air operations, and doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work when it comes to assessing intelligence. So we do have to discern that there is truth to the fact that the military was already there to assist Border Patrol because the resources provided by the federal government are strained and over the years have been overwhelmed. But what the Trump administration is doing is putting more of those Pentagon resources there as a show of force, as a show of them clamping down on the southern border. And even if numbers are low, what Trump officials want is for numbers to be zero.

Speaker 1: Right. And, Lulu, let's play some sound from some migrants who made the journey to the U.S.-Mexico border only to discover it's closed to asylum seekers. Let's listen to that.

Speaker 4: When I thought I was going to make it, everything comes down, my God.

Speaker 5: What's going to happen? They come and ask me what's going to happen. What answer do I give to my children? I have no answer because I don't know what's going to happen to us on the street.

Speaker 6: With this closure, it was the only way we could legally get to the United States. And now it's been completely in vain the sacrifice we've made to get out of our countries. We have to cross thousands of countries to get there. It's been a very, very, very hard blow.

Speaker 3: And so they did everything the right way, they think. And yet still they are being penalized for it because of the change in this administration. And that is an enormous human toll. These are families. These are children.

Speaker 1: All right, Priscilla, Lulu, thank you both very much. Appreciate it. In the meantime, several cities are now seeing President Trump's expanding immigration crackdown, as Lulu was just discussing. ICE announced more than 500 arrests just yesterday, some of them in Newark, New Jersey. A restaurant owner there says about a dozen agents demanded to see documentation of his employees.

Speaker 4: A couple of the guys couldn't show their identification. Three of them got arrested. 26 years in business, I've never seen anything like this.

Speaker 1: Now, Newark's mayor says ICE officers, quote, unlawfully terrorized his city and detained undocumented residents as well as some U.S. citizens. CNN has been unable to independently verify that, but the mayor is expected to speak later on this morning. Joining us now is the former acting director of ICE, John Sandweg. John, I guess what's your take? First of all, I want to ask you about Newark in just a moment. But we were just showing these images coming in from the White House. Of course, we have to remind our viewers these are images provided by the White House of migrants being loaded onto military transport planes. What was your reaction to that when you saw it?

Speaker 7: Jim, look, I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. I mean, the administration has essentially declared a war on immigration, not just at the border, but also in the interior. And by that, I mean through these executive orders, declaring this a foreign invasion, but also harnessing all the resources of the entire U.S. government, not just focusing or relying on the Department of Homeland Security to focus on immigration enforcement here, but pulling on DOD resources, pulling on Department of Justice resources. So, look, historically, as Priscilla noted a moment ago, we've seen the military at the border. During the Obama administration, we called on National Guard to supplement the Border Patrol's resources, but they were in a very limited and supportive capacity, primarily providing and enhancing our surveillance capabilities at the border. The use of military transport planes certainly is unprecedented, and I really think this is just the beginning, because I think, like was just mentioned, they're just trying to augment ICE resources and DHS resources in order to carry out the mass deportation.