AILSA CHANG, HOST:
The Trump administration has moved quickly on its plan to send as many as 30,000 migrants from the United States to the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Deported migrants have already landed there. NPR's Sacha Pfeiffer has details on who they are and where they are being held, exactly. Hi, Sacha.
SACHA PFEIFFER, BYLINE: Hi, Ailsa.
CHANG: OK, so how many migrants are there already at this point?
PFEIFFER: At least one planeload of 10 people so far, and Defense Department photos are circulating of a second planeload that arrived today - all members of a Venezuelan organized crime group called Tren de Aragua. The U.S. government has labeled it a transnational criminal organization and is also trying to get it designated a foreign terrorist organization. The Trump administration calls these men high-threat illegal aliens. And Homeland Security, Ailsa, posted photos of what it says are them in handcuffs and gray sweatsuits boarding a military plane in Texas to head to Guantanamo. Some have prominent face and neck tattoos that can be a signifier of gang membership.
CHANG: OK. And now that they are at Guantanamo, where are they being housed?
PFEIFFER: The government says they're in a military prison that used to house foreign terror suspects like al-Qaida. There is another military prison at Guantanamo that currently does house alleged terrorists and convicts. That's where, for example, the alleged 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, has been for almost two decades. But the government says deported migrants are not being held alongside people like KSM. It says the migrants are in a previously vacant part of a prison.
CHANG: Prison - OK, but didn't the Trump administration say that these migrants would be held in a separate detention facility?
PFEIFFER: Yes, it did say that. It says Guantanamo is meant to be a short-term stopover until these migrants are shipped elsewhere and that it would do a massive expansion of a detention facility at Guantanamo that has been used for decades to hold migrants picked up at sea. That detention facility is different than the military prison area. And here's what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last week about where deported migrants would be housed.
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PETE HEGSETH: This is not the camps. You're not putting criminals...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Right.
HEGSETH: ...In camps where ISIS and other criminals - this is a temporary transit where we can plus-up (ph) thousands and tens of thousands if necessary, to humanely move illegals out of our country, where they do not belong, back to the countries where they came from, in proper process.
PFEIFFER: But, Ailsa, the first migrants to have arrived at Gitmo have ended up in that prison camp complex, even if not in a cell with some al-Qaida fighter.
CHANG: Wow. What do you think the chances are that these deported migrants end up being held at Guantanamo for years and years?
PFEIFFER: The Trump administration says that is not the intention, but it has not said what length of time it considers temporary. This actually came up when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem went on "Meet The Press" last weekend. The host asked her this.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MEET THE PRESS")
KRISTEN WELKER: Is it possible, Madam Secretary, that people could be held at Guantanamo Bay indefinitely?
KRISTI NOEM: That is not the plan. The plan is to have a process that we follow that's laid out in law and make sure that we're dealing with these individuals appropriately. But it is an asset that we have that we fully intend to utilize.
PFEIFFER: Ailsa, I've talked to several lawyers, though, who worry that holding migrants at Guantanamo could become the same kind of long-term legal morass that holding foreign terror suspects there has turned into. And also, by the way, Secretary Noem is scheduled to visit Gitmo tomorrow.
CHANG: That is NPR's Sacha Pfeiffer. Thank you so much, Sacha.
PFEIFFER: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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