From Alligator Alcatraz to South Sudan

0:00President Trump met with the leaders of five African nations at the White House yesterday. one oops got all the attention when Trump paid Liberia's president a compliment. Well, thank you. I had such good English, such beautiful. Where did you learn to speak so beautifully? English is Liberia's official language. Were you educated where? Yes, sir. In Liberia? Yes, sir. Well, that's very interesting. Anyway, you know what happened behind closed doors right before that meeting? President Trump pushed those African leaders to accept people who are being deported from the U.S. That's according to a Wall Street Journal exclusive.

0:40The Trump administration is going increasingly ham on sending people who entered the U.S. illegally to countries that they are not from. In fact, it's trying all kinds of ideas to increase the pace of deportations. And we're going to tell you the latest today on Today Explained.

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2:00Up to Opel Grillen on Saturday, 24 January, with your partner. More on Opel.de.

2:30Well, the administration has dramatically expanded who is actually eligible to be arrested and deported in the first place. The administration is also increasing the number of deportation arrangements with different countries, want to have those countries take back their citizens who are in the country illegally. But it is also importantly asking different countries across the world to take back deportees who are not their own citizens. And it has already convinced countries in the region like El Salvador, but also Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and others to take back people who are not from those countries.

3:08It has secured some limited agreements with countries like South Sudan, Kosovo and Europe and others, including Rwanda, to have the U.S. deport people who are not from those countries to those nations. I want to ask you about South Sudan because there was a story last week that I think flew a little bit under the radar in which some men were actually sent from the U.S. to South Sudan. Can you tell us what happened there? Yes. So for the past few weeks, the Trump administration has been trying to deport a group of eight men with serious criminal records to South Sudan. But those efforts had been blocked by a federal judge in Boston who had found that these detainees needed to, at the very least, be screened and interviewed by a U.S.

4:00asylum officer before being deported to South Sudan. The Trump administration is now fighting back after a judge ruled the administration broke the law by deporting eight undocumented migrants, the White House attempting to send these men from various countries to the nation of South Sudan. A federal judge in Massachusetts said Wednesday the Trump administration's deportation of eight migrants, quote, unquestionably violates a court order blocking deportations to third countries without allowing detainees to contest their removal. And the reason behind that is because, of course, this is the youngest country in the world and it is one plagued by political instability and armed conflict.

4:39The U.S. State Department actually, Noel, warned Americans not to visit this country because of the threat of being kidnapped or otherwise harmed. And so advocates for immigrants were really concerned that these men could be victimized or otherwise harmed in South Sudan if deported there. the U.S. decided to send them to an American military base in Djibouti to undergo that screening. And they were stuck there for weeks until the Supreme Court just a few weeks ago allowed the administration to carry out these third country deportations with a very limited degree of due process and notice. And then later clarified that that order also allowed the administration to deport these men to South Sudan.

5:25A significant win for the Trump administration here. The high court allowing them to resume deporting migrants to countries other than their homeland. And we're talking about some turmoil ridden countries like South Sudan. Yeah, the reaction here, especially the ordinary South Sudanese people are actually concerned because they say these are criminals. and if America, a great nation, is actually fearing them to stay in the U.S., why would they be brought here? And it is really important to remind everyone, obviously, that the men we're talking about, Noel, don't hail from South Sudan. They are from countries like Cuba, Myanmar, Mexico, and other countries in Latin America and Asia not from South Sudan.

6:17Do we know what happens to the men when they get there? It is really unclear. The U.S. has said that South Sudan is offering them a temporary immigration status so they can live in that African country for a certain period of time that will be dictated by officials there. The U.S. said that it has not asked South Sudan to detain them. But the concern among advocates is that the human rights record of this country is not a very good one. And so they have concerns about what could happen to these men. Of course, South Sudan knows about their criminal histories, which are very serious in nature. Some of their convictions include convictions for homicide and sexual assault.

7:00And they believe that could potentially cause officials to take any retaliatory action against these men, rather. And so that is a concern. But the problem here is that these agreements have been very secretive in scope. OK, so this is a bit of a patchwork mess. You do have some countries potentially saying we will take people, but we won't take people with serious criminal records. What other countries are we talking about here? Is there like a list somewhere? Well, we know, for example, that the U.S. under the Trump administration has already deported third country migrants to places like Costa Rica and Panama, which received deportees from Africa and Asia earlier in the second Trump administration.

7:45The U.S. began flying hundreds of migrants, mostly from Asian, Middle Eastern and African countries to Panama. Just last night, these folks who've been deported from the United States to Panama were transported to a camp near the Darien jungle. And there's about 100 of them, including eight children who are now at that jungle camp. The country of Kosovo in Europe has agreed to take 50 people, which is, again, a limited number. but it is still significant because it is the first country in that continent in Europe to agree publicly at least to accept third-country nationals under the Trump administration.

8:24The U.S. has cut a deal to send a small number of migrant deportees to the European nation of Kosovo. Selected third-country nationals may be relocated to Kosovo for up to one year. Then Pristina will support their safe return to their homeland. And we also know based on documents that the administration has approached countries like Equatorial Guinea, Angola, Eswatini, Rwanda, and others in Africa to also strike some of these agreements. These are countries in many cases where the U.S. has tremendous leverage because they are developing countries that rely in many ways on U.S. financial assistance and support.

9:04And so these are the countries that have the most to lose if the U.S. were to retaliate for not striking these agreements and maybe are also the most to gain if they actually agree to accept these deportations from the U.S. One challenge that the administration has been facing from the jump is that you have got to hold people someplace before you deport them. And there has not been capacity. What's the administration's plan to deal with that? ICE right now, according to internal data that we obtained, is holding about 58 ,000 detainees. That is about 140 % of its congressionally funded capacity.

9:52So they are way over capacity. And the agency, Noel, has been running out of space because ICE operations have been expanding. And the agency is arresting more people than it can actually hold in detention before moving to deport them to their countries of origin or to a third country. The administration is doing multiple things to try to address this issue. Obviously, it is trying to move people out of the country as quickly as possible, but it is also turning to the Department of Defense and to military installations to try to convert them into processing facilities and temporary immigration detention centers.

10:31For example, they're looking at whether friendly states like Florida and Texas can aid that detention capacity level by offering facilities like Alligator Alcatraz. Welcome to Alligator Alcatraz. The entrance here is a 30-foot tall wall. None of this was here five days ago, and we saw at least 30 alligators on our way in. We have a lot of bodyguards and a lot of cops that are in the form of alligators. You don't have to pay them so much. It might be as good as the real Alcatraz site. You know, it could be. Well, that's a spooky one too, isn't it? That is the tent facility that a Florida state official set up about a week ago in the Everglades to hold people awaiting deportation, people transferred from ICE custody.

11:23But right now, Florida retains control over this facility, which again is in the middle of the Everglades and is by most objective measures sending rather a message that the administration and Florida are going to take a very tough stance on this issue. and that if you are in the country illegally or planning to potentially cross into the country illegally, now there is a non-zero chance that you could end up in a facility like Alligator Alcatraz in the middle of the Everglades. Does the Trump administration have plans to build more facilities along these lines? Yes, it does. And in fact, the big, beautiful bill that President Trump has recently signed into law is offering ICE$45 billion in additional funding to expand its detention network.

12:18And the money will allow ICE, according to cost estimates, to expand that detention capacity to more than 100 ,000 detention beds. To do so, ICE will have to contract new facilities. But obviously, there are many for-profit prison companies that are eager to help ICE in this effort because it is highly profitable to be housing immigration detainees right now during the second Trump administration. So we should expect the administration to move aggressively to set up new detention facilities and to expand capacity at existing ones too. The Trump administration has set very ambitious goals in terms of its aggressive immigration agenda.

13:03Officials have set a goal of deporting close to 1 million people per year, which has never been done in U.S. history. And right now ICE is not getting close to that number. And so what ICE is saying now is that the big, beautiful bill that has been signed into law will allow the agency to turbocharge its arrest and deportation efforts, but it's still to be determined whether they can actually meet these very lofty and ambitious targets.

13:44Camilo Montoya-Galvez. He covers immigration and border policy for CBS News. Up next, the push to get people to self-deport. Is it working?

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18:10you're listening to today explained i'm noelle king with nick miroff he's a staff writer at the atlantic he covers the department of homeland security and immigration enforcement and recently he wrote a piece called the self-deportation psyop which began with him watching baseball on the TV. I mean, you know, one minute I was watching Dodgers game and the next minute I looked up and there was Kristi Noem, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. An illegal alien from Guatemala charged with raping a child in Massachusetts. An MS-13 gang member from El Salvador accused of murdering a Texas man.

18:50She's thanking Trump for cracking down at the border. It starts showing images of alleged gang members that the administration has sent to this mega prison in El Salvador. These are just some of the heinous migrant criminals caught because of President Donald J. Trump's leadership. It's like a very, you know, dark and kind of scary ad. If you are here illegally, you're next. You will be fined nearly$1 ,000 a day, imprisoned and deported. You will never return. But if you register using our CBP Home app and leave now, you could be allowed to return legally. And then suddenly it pivots to this pitch for CBP Home, which is the administration's self-deportation app.

19:36And the message of the ad is basically, you know, you better self-deport using this app or else, you know, we could throw you into some kind of, you know, gulag in El Salvador. Do what's right. Leave now. Under President Trump, America's laws, border, and families will be protected. What is this app? It's been around for a while, right? The app originally started out primarily as a tool for trucking companies that wanted to schedule cargo inspections along the southern border. It was called CBP-1. And CBP-1 was essentially repurposed in 2023 by the Biden administration when the Biden administration was trying to get asylum seekers and migrants who were flooding across the border trying to get them to schedule appointments.

20:30If they're seeking asylum, they can use an app on their cell phone called CBP1, O-N-E, CBP1, O-N-E. That's to spell it out, not the number one. The Biden administration's attempt there was basically to get people to kind of hope that if they could schedule an appointment to kind of manage the flow of people a little bit better and get people to wait. And the Biden administration eventually brought in, allowed about a million people to come across the border. And that was a big source of scorn from Republicans and from President Trump along the campaign trail. And so what we saw several months into the administration was a rebranding of CBP-1 as CBP-Home.

21:19And that idea came from Trump advisor Stephen Miller. And they have rolled out the app now as a self-deportation app. So when you give an illegal immigrant a check for, say,$1 ,000 or$2 ,000, whatever it may be,$3 ,000, to leave the country, you're saving taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. It also saves money relative to us having to go out and find that illegal alien and physically arrest them and deport them, which, of course, we will still do. Tell me about the idea behind self-deportation and how it's supposed to work. Well, the administration is inviting that person to go to this app, CBP Home, and enter personal information and a departure plan.

22:05And then someone from the Department of Homeland Security is basically going to contact that person and help them coordinate travel and confirm other details of the departure. The administration is willing to pay airfare and other related travel to people who volunteer to self-deport and is offering a thousand dollar what they call exit bonus, which you will receive upon arrival in your destination country. That doesn't have to be your home countries, but it can't be the United States. In the first half of the show, we talked about the Trump administration sending people to third party countries, countries that they are not from.

22:45If a person chooses to self-deport, what are the punitive aspects of this that they might miss? Well, they will miss all of the punitive aspects, and that's a big part of the self-deportation pitch from the administration. They're saying, you know, if you voluntarily agree to do this process, you'll be protected from our ICE officers and agents and a much more unpleasant outcome that would involve being kept in ICE detention and what everyone knows are pretty dire conditions right now. Now, you know, I think what the administration is really banking on is that by making deportation, you know, by ICE seem as intimidating and as scary as possible, that they will get more and more people to opt to self-deport.

23:31How effective has this been? Well, in terms of overall numbers, I would say it's still pretty modest. 7 ,000 people have signed up so far through the app to self-deport and that they have confirmed more than 3 ,000 departures. But the numbers do seem to be accelerating as the administration advertises the program more widely. But I think what they're really banking on is that the ICE mass deportation campaign will be will be scary enough that they'll get more and more people willing to do this.

24:07nick this is anecdotal but i know that for example if you look on social media like tiktok you will see people talking about their decision to self-deport to go home hi my name is q and i'm making this video to share my experience as i am beginning self-deportation my name is francisco and i recently self-deported from the u.s to live in mexico with my husband after being in this country for 36 years. My mom is leaving behind three grown-ass kids and three grandchildren. She decided to do this in her own terms. This was her finally meeting with my grandma after driving five hours from Mexico City to her town.

24:48A few thousand people doesn't sound like that much given how much chatter there is about it. Does this feel bigger than it actually is or do we actually not know a real number? I think at this stage, it feels bigger than the numbers indicate so far because of the administration's promotion of CBP Home, the ads like the one that I described with Secretary Noem and some of the social media videos that you reference. But I do think that they are counting on this program to really expand, that they think a lot more people are going to take this route. So I think we can expect that a lot more people are going to end up wanting to take the self-deportation option.

25:36You have sources inside the administration. And I wonder, you know, one narrative is, look, this is just better. This is more humane. This is it's more humane to make the decision on your own terms than to get sent to alligator Alcatraz. As much glee as there has been over that within the administration. When you talk to people, do they see it that way? Do they see it as, look, we're giving you a choice? It's just it is better for you? That's what they say. I mean, they view CBP Home as the more, you know, humane alternative to being arrested by ICE. You know, they think that also that by presenting people with this option and, you know, sweetening it by even offering, you know, to pay travel expenses and to provide a cash bonus, that they're giving people a really good choice.

26:28And so it almost kind of further criminalizes in their mind the decision to remain in the United States without legal status. The administration is also saying that if you leave voluntarily through CBP Home, that you will have an opportunity to apply to return to the United States. But as advocates are pointing out, the administration has not specified how exactly that will work. And so they're making it sound as if you'll go home and you'll just go to show up at the U.S. embassy the next day and get an appointment to come back to the United States legally. And that is not the case. And so people who do take this option are potentially going to be unable to return to the United States if ever.

27:13And there's no actual mechanism that will give them kind of an advantage if they apply for a visa. The only thing is, you know, supposedly they'll count favorably toward their case or their application.