70 million dollars. Not a single deportee. Instead, a bar.

Kristi Noem is gone. The aircraft is not.

Trump fired Noem last month because he did not like her statements before Congress. Noem had explained that Trump had personally approved controversial expenditures by the department. That was the sentence that was too much. She left. The aircraft stayed. In Washington, this is sometimes called loyalty - just in the other direction.

70 million dollars. Paid by the immigration authority ICE, with funds that Congress increased last year, explicitly for Trump’s promised mass deportations. In the documents, the aircraft was listed as a tool for high profile deportations. What it actually had: a queen size bed, showers, a kitchen, four flat screen televisions and a bar. One has to imagine what kind of deportation one plans with that.

Not a single person was deported. Not one.

Noem herself had primarily used the aircraft for her own travel, occasionally accompanied by her close associate Corey Lewandowski. Numerous indications point to an affair between the two. Within the Department of Homeland Security, they apparently handled it openly. When she left, ICE officials thought the purchase plan would collapse. The White House thought otherwise. It simply took over the aircraft. No Congress, no vote. The Department of Homeland Security lost control of it, the top staff of the White House gained it. Melania Trump’s office is said to have access. Selected cabinet members as well.

That is the path of deportation funds. They fly. Just without deportees.

RJ Hauman from the National Immigration Center for Enforcement, an organization that has been pushing the government for months to take a harder line on deportations, called it offensive. Tens of millions for a luxury jet that does not deport a single person. Marc Short, former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, asked how one could purchase an aircraft of this magnitude without asking Congress. They had promised to cut wasteful spending.

Outside, the same government speaks daily about the harsh necessity of migration control. About borders that must be protected. About funds that are needed for that. Inside, at 12,000 meters, there is a bar. Trump has also recently accepted a luxury jet from the government of Qatar. He is expected to use it this summer. Before that, he had repeatedly complained about the condition of Air Force One.

It is hard to say what stands out more here. The audacity. Or the matter of fact way in which it is presented.