The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently flew over 100 Chinese illegal migrants back to their country, the agency announced.

In a press statement released Tuesday, the DHS explained that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) "conducted a removal flight" carrying Chinese nationals over the weekend. The flight carried 116 Chinese migrants, according to the Associated Press.

The United States sent a group of migrants back to China on the first large deportation flight there since 2018, and said on Tuesday that it was working with Chinese authorities to arrange additional flights.

The deportation, on a charter flight, took place over the weekend in coordination with Chinese authorities, the Department of Homeland Security said. The department confirmed that 116 people from China were deported.

U.S. and Chinese authorities were working together on additional removal flights, the statement said.

The Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday that 116 Chinese nationals were deported back to China, a move that came after a surge of Chinese migrants entering at the U.S. southern border in recent years.

The charter flight took place over the weekend and in coordination with the Chinese government, according to the DHS, which said it was the first large such flight since 2018. 

The Department of Homeland Security announced that it sent a plane carrying 116 Chinese migrants from the U.S. to China, marking the first “large charter flight” in five years.

The announcement was made on Tuesday after the flight occurred over the weekend.

A record number of Chinese nationals, 37,000, were encountered at the southern border in 2023.

“We will continue to enforce our immigration laws and remove individuals without a legal basis to remain in the United States,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.

The United States is going to pay for flights and offer other help to Panama to remove migrants under an agreement signed July 1, as the Central American country’s new president has vowed to shut down the treacherous Darién Gap used by people traveling north to the United States.

The memorandum of understanding was signed during an official visit headed by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to Panama for the inauguration July 1 of José Raúl Mulino, the country’s new president.

The US and Panama have signed an agreement on immigration issues that aims to “close the passage of illegal migrants” through the Darién Gap, the Central American government announced Monday.

“In the agreement signed today by the Panamanian Foreign Minister Javier Martínez-Acha and the Secretary of Homeland Security of the United States Alejandro Mayorcas, the US government undertakes to cover the cost of the repatriation of immigrants who enter illegally through Darién,” the Panama government said in a statement.

The Biden administration on Monday inked a deal with the Panamanian government to help stop illegal migration along the Darien Gap, a sign that the country’s new president is following through on a major campaign promise.

The Biden administration has begun flying illegal immigrants who came over the southern border back to China after a six-year hiatus in large charter plane repatriation flights.

The Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted its first large charter flight to the People’s Republic of China over the weekend.

The GOP-led House voted on Wednesday to defund Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, a Biden administration official who was impeached by the lower chamber earlier this year in a rebuke of his handling of the border crisis.

A group of 193 Republican lawmakers voted to pass the amendment that Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) sponsored for appropriations legislation that aims to provide tens of billions of dollars to the Homeland Security Department (DHS) in the next fiscal year.

The Senate on Wednesday dismissed the impeachment case against Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, voting along party lines before his trial got underway to sweep aside two charges accusing him of failing to enforce immigration laws and breaching the public trust.