Sara McKinnon, a professor of rhetoric, politics and culture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that the images of the deportations are intended for the Trump administration to show its power to remove migrants.
“We didn’t see visualities of the deportation flights really at all during the first Trump administration,” McKinnon said. “We’re living in a different moment of spectacle, a different moment of visuality, and I think because there’s such a blurriness between what is entertainment media and what is news media, the administration is really playing on that.”