From Alligator Alcatraz to South Sudan

Speaker 1 President 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.

Speaker 2 Well, thank you in such good English. Such beautiful.

Speaker 2 Where did you learn to speak so beautifully?

Speaker 1 English is Liberia's official language.

Speaker 2 Were you educated where?

Speaker 2 In Liberia. Yes, sir.
Well, that's very interesting.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 That's according to a Wall Street Journal exclusive. The Trump administration is going increasingly ham on sending people who entered the U.S.
illegally to countries that they are not from.

Speaker 1 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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Speaker 5 You're listening to Today Explained.

Speaker 6 My name is Camilo Montoya Galbes, and I cover immigration and border policy for CBS News.

Speaker 1 The Trump administration is using a few different strategies to try to raise the number of deportations. What strategies are they using at this point?

Speaker 6 Well, the administration has dramatically expanded who is actually eligible to be arrested and deported in the first place.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 But it is also importantly asking different countries across the world to take back deportees who are not their own citizens.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 It has secured some limited agreement with countries like South Sudan, Kosovo, and Europe, and others, including Rwanda, to have the U.S.

Speaker 6 deport people who are not from those countries to those nations.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Can you tell us what happened there?

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 asylum officer before being deported to South Sudan.

Speaker 7 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.

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 6 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. The U.S.

Speaker 6 State Department, actually, Noel, warns Americans not to visit this country because of the threat of being kidnapped or otherwise harmed.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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 clarify that that order also allowed the administration to deport these men to South Sudan.

Speaker 9 A significant win for the Trump administration here, the high court allowing them to resume deporting migrants to countries other than their homeland.

Speaker 9 And we're talking about some sort of turmoil-ridden countries like South Sudan.

Speaker 10 Yeah, the reaction here, especially the ordinary South Sudanese people, are actually concerned because they say these are criminals.

Speaker 10 And if America, a great nation, is actually fearing them to stay in the U.S., why would they be brought here? This is what makes it...

Speaker 6 And it's really important to remind everyone, obviously, that the men we're talking about, Noel, don't hail from South Sudan.

Speaker 6 They are from countries like Cuba, Myanmar, Mexico, and other countries in Latin America and Asia not from South Sudan.

Speaker 1 Do we know what happens to the men when they get there?

Speaker 6 It is really unclear. The U.S.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Some of their convictions include convictions for homicide and sexual assault, and they believe that could potentially cause officials to take any retaliatory action against these men, rather.

Speaker 6 And so that is a concern, but the

Speaker 6 problem here is that these agreements have been very secretive in scope.

Speaker 1 Okay, 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.

Speaker 1 What other countries are we talking about here? Is there like a list somewhere?

Speaker 6 Well, we know, for example, that the U.S.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 11 The U.S. began flying hundreds of migrants mostly from Asian, Middle Eastern, and African countries to Panama.

Speaker 13 Just last night, these folks who've been deported from the United States to Panama were transported to a camp near the Darien jungle.

Speaker 13 And there's about 100 of them, including eight children, who are now at that jungle camp.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 14 The U.S. has cut a deal to send a small number of migrant deportees to the European nation of Kosovo.

Speaker 15 Selected third country nationals may be relocated to Kosovo for up to one year. Then Pristina will support their safe return to their homeland.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And so these are the countries that have the most to lose if the U.S.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 What's the administration's plan to deal with that?

Speaker 6 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.
So they are way over capacity.

Speaker 6 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 the port them to their countries of origin or to a third country.

Speaker 6 The administration is doing multiple things to try to address this issue.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 processing facilities and temporary immigration detention centers.

Speaker 6 For example, they're looking at whether friendly states like Florida and texas can aid that detention capacity level by offering facilities like alligator alcatraz

Speaker 16 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 they have a lot of bodyguards and a lot of cops that are in the form of alligators.

Speaker 17 You don't have to pay them so much.

Speaker 18 It might be as good as the real real Alcatraz. You know, it could be.
Well, that's a spooky one, too, isn't it?

Speaker 6 That is the tent facility that Florida state officials set up about a week ago in the Everglades to hold people awaiting deportation, people transferred from ICE custody.

Speaker 6 But 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 1 Does the Trump administration have plans to build more facilities along these lines?

Speaker 6 Yes, it does. And in fact, the big, beautiful beautiful bill that President Trump has recently signed into law is offering ICE $45 billion in additional funding to expand its detention network.

Speaker 6 And 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So, we should expect the administration to move aggressively to set up new detention facilities and to expand capacity at existing ones, too.

Speaker 6 The Trump administration has set very ambitious goals in terms of its aggressive immigration agenda.

Speaker 6 Officials 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 1 Camilo 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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Speaker 19 You're listening to Today Explained.

Speaker 1 I'm Noel King with Nick Miroff. He's a staff writer at The Atlantic.
He covers the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration Enforcement.

Speaker 1 And recently, he wrote a piece called The Self-Deportation PSYOP, which began with him watching baseball on the TV.

Speaker 5 I mean, you know, one minute I was watching Dodgers game, and the next minute I looked up and there was Christy Noam, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 5 She'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.

Speaker 20 These are just some of the heinous migrant criminals caught because of President Donald J. Trump's leadership.

Speaker 5 It's like a very, you know, know, dark and kind of scary ad.

Speaker 20 If you are here illegally, you're next. You will be fined nearly $1,000 a day, imprisoned, and deported.
You will never return.

Speaker 20 But if you register using our CBP Home app and leave now, you could be allowed to return legally.

Speaker 5 And then suddenly it pivots to this pitch for CBP Home, which is the administration's self-deportation app.

Speaker 5 And the message of the ad was 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.

Speaker 20 Do what's right. Leave now.
Under President Trump, America's laws, order, and families will be protected.

Speaker 1 What is this app? It's been around for a while, right?

Speaker 5 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 CBP1.

Speaker 5 And CBP1 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.

Speaker 21 If they're seeking asylum, they can use an app on their cell phone called CBP1, O-N-E. CBP1, O-N-E.

Speaker 21 That's to spell it out, not the number one.

Speaker 5 The Biden administration's attempt there was

Speaker 5 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

Speaker 5 get people to wait. And the Biden administration eventually brought in, you know, allowed about a million people to come across the border.
And that was a big source of scorn from Republicans and from

Speaker 5 President Trump along the campaign trail. And so what we saw several months into the administration was a rebranding of CBP1 as CBP Home.

Speaker 5 And that idea came from Trump advisor Stephen Miller. And they have rolled out the app now as a self-deportation app.

Speaker 22 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.

Speaker 22 This 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.

Speaker 1 Tell me about the idea behind self-deportation and how it's supposed to work.

Speaker 5 Well, the administration is inviting that person to go to this app,

Speaker 5 CBP Home, and enter personal information and a departure plan.

Speaker 5 And 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.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 1 In the first half of the show, we talked about about the Trump administration sending people to third-party countries, countries that they are not from.

Speaker 1 If a person chooses to self-deport, what are the punitive aspects of this that they might miss?

Speaker 5 Well, they will miss all of the punitive aspects, and that's a big part of the self-deportation pitch from the administration.

Speaker 5 They're saying, you know, if you voluntarily agree to do this process, you'll be protected from our, you know, our ICE officers and agents and a much more unpleasant outcome that would involve

Speaker 5 being kept in ICE detention and what everyone knows are pretty dire conditions right now.

Speaker 5 I think what the administration is really banking on is that by making deportation

Speaker 5 by ICE seem as intimidating and as scary as possible, that they will get more and more people to opt to self-deport.

Speaker 1 How effective has this been?

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 But the numbers do seem to be accelerating as the administration advertises the program more widely.

Speaker 5 But I think what they're really banking on is that the ICE mass deportation campaign will be scary enough that they'll get more and more people willing to do this.

Speaker 1 Nick, 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.

Speaker 19 Hi, my name is Q. I'm making this video to share my experience as I am beginning self-deportation.

Speaker 23 My name is Francisco, and I recently self-deported from the U.S. to live in Mexico with my husband.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 24 This was her finally meeting with my grandma after driving five hours from Mexico City to her town.

Speaker 1 A few thousand people doesn't sound like that much given how much chatter there is about it.

Speaker 1 Does this feel bigger than it actually is, or do we

Speaker 1 actually not know a real number?

Speaker 5 I think at this stage it feels bigger than the numbers indicate so far because of the administration's promotion of CBP

Speaker 5 the ads like the one

Speaker 5 that I described with Secretary Noam, and some of the social media videos that you reference. But I do think that this,

Speaker 5 they are counting on this program to really expand, that they think a lot more people are going to take this route.

Speaker 5 So I think we can expect that a lot more people are going to end up wanting to take the self-deportation option. Aaron Powell,

Speaker 1 you have sources inside the administration, and I wonder: you know, one narrative is:

Speaker 1 look, this is just better. This is more humane.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 5 Aaron Powell, that's what they say. I mean, they view CBP Home as the more, you know, humane alternative to being arrested by ICE.

Speaker 5 They think that also that by presenting people with this option and sweetening it by even offering to pay travel expenses and to provide a cash bonus, that they're giving people a really good choice.

Speaker 5 And so it almost kind of further criminalizes in their mind the decision to remain in the United States without legal status.

Speaker 5 The administration is also saying that

Speaker 5 if you leave voluntarily through CBP home, that you will have an opportunity to apply to return to the United States.

Speaker 5 But as advocates are pointing out, the administration has not specified how exactly that will work.

Speaker 5 And so they're making it sound as if you'll go home and you'll just go to, you know, show up at the U.S.

Speaker 5 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

Speaker 5 potentially going to be unable to return to the United States if ever, and there's no actual mechanism that will give them kind of an advantage if they apply for a visa.

Speaker 5 The only thing is, you know, supposedly that'll count favorably toward their case or their application.

Speaker 1 Nick Miroff of The Atlantic. Gabrielle Bourbay produced today's show.
Miranda Kennedy edited. Laura Bullard is our senior researcher.
Andrea Kristen's daughter and Patrick Boyd engineered.

Speaker 1 The rest of our team includes Avishai Artsi, Hadi Muwag, Demiles Bryan, Peter Baladon, Rosen, Devin Schwartz, Denise Guerra, Rebecca Ibara, Amin El Sadi, and Jolie Myers.

Speaker 1 Sean Ramasfirm is back from vacation next week. And not a moment too soon.
Tomorrow we're off. You can look for a rerun of our show on plastic rain in your feeds.

Speaker 1 And coming up on Sunday, of course, explain it to me. We'll explain it to you.
JQ, what are you covering this week?

Speaker 26 Okay, so this week we're going to be talking about people and their relationships with AI. We got a ton of calls from listeners who use chatbots on a regular basis.

Speaker 25 And people use it in all kinds of ways. Some for work, some for small tasks, and some people even use it just to vent or talk.

Speaker 1 Did you get anyone who has like an AI boyfriend or girlfriend?

Speaker 25 No one with a romantic relationship, but we do have a caller who likes to have like deep philosophical conversations. Yes, yes.

Speaker 1 All right, I will be there. Tune in on Sunday.
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