MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
President Trump says he plans to use a migrant holding facility at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to house up to 30,000 migrants deported from the United States.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The president brought this up at a bill-signing event. His notion was to detain what he called, quote, "the worst criminal illegal aliens." Reusing a famous base is an idea that Trump brought up before his first presidential term, but he never did it. His Homeland Security secretary acknowledges the administration would need an act of Congress to spend money on the idea now.
MARTIN: NPR's Sacha Pfeiffer has been covering Guantanamo Bay for years, and she's here with us in our studios in Washington, D.C., to tell us more about this latest development. Good morning.
SACHA PFEIFFER, BYLINE: Good morning, Michel.
MARTIN: So, Sacha, look. I think most people, when they hear Guantanamo, they think of a prison for suspected foreign terrorists. Like, this is where the alleged 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, is held. So are we talking about the same place?
PFEIFFER: We are not. The Trump administration is saying that migrants would not be in that U.S. military prison detention facility where Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is held. They would instead be on the naval base portion of Guantanamo, which is a separate area. And for decades, the naval base has had a detention facility that houses migrants intercepted at sea. They're usually Haitian or Cuban or Dominican. It's been mostly empty for years, so Trump is saying he wants to expand that migrant detention facility to make room for deported migrants.
MARTIN: So once there, how long would migrants be held there?
PFEIFFER: This came up on Fox News, where the Trump administration basically broke this news yesterday. Fox had on Pete Hegseth, the new defense secretary, and Hegseth said the plan is not to hold these migrants indefinitely. Indefinite detention is what is happening at the military prison. Some people there have been held for two decades, more than two decades, without being charged. But Hegseth says when it comes to deported migrants, Guantanamo would be a waystation, as he called it, until the administration finds other countries to take them. Here he is on Fox.
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PETE HEGSETH: This is not the camps. You're not putting criminals...
WILL CAIN: Right.
HEGSETH: ...In camps where ISIS and other criminal - this is a temporary transit where we can plus up 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, Michel, details are very thin so far, and the Trump administration has not said how it would define what Hegseth called temporary transit.
MARTIN: Does the existing migrant holding facility at Guantanamo actually have 30,000 beds?
PFEIFFER: Unclear. When Trump first announced this, he said it did, but he later said he plans to expand the facility to full capacity. I spoke about this with the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Vince Warren. And he said this about the current status of Guantanamo's migrant detention operation.
VINCE WARREN: There haven't been 30,000 beds in decades. The facility is decrepit. It's been falling apart. It's in disrepair.
PFEIFFER: He told me he knows that through reports from migrants who have been there. Defense Secretary Hegseth also said a golf course on the naval base would have room for 6,000 deported migrants. So the administration seems to be trying to identify different spaces at Guantanamo that could have room for tens of thousands of people.
MARTIN: And before we let you go, holding prisoners at Guantanamo has been very expensive over the years. Do we know how much this would cost and where this money would come from?
PFEIFFER: The administration did not give a dollar figure, but you're right. The plan would require construction, food, lodging for people held there, guards or staff to oversee it, money to transport migrants there - because Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, said the migrants would be flown there directly. So on cost, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said only that money would be appropriated by Congress for that. She also said ICE - Immigration and Customs Enforcement - would run the facility. As for when migrants might start being flown there, they didn't say. There'll certainly be a lot of litigation about this.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Sacha Pfeiffer. Sacha, thank you.
PFEIFFER: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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