Uh, Priscilla, what concerns are there about sending people to these countries, especially when they often don't know anyone there or have any connection to the place?

Well, I think you hit the nail on the head there, uh, which is to say that there have been ongoing concerns about the conditions that people are returning to, to countries that they have no ties to, and in some cases do not even know about.

There were i-interviews with some nationals from Latin America who were sent to countries in Africa that they hadn't heard of, like Liberia.

Now, what's tricky here is that we don't have a good sense of how many people we're talking about here.

The Migration Policy Institute estimated that between January and December of twenty twenty-five, there were about fifteen thousand people that had been deported to third countries.

And I think in this conversation, you have been discussing how shrouded in secrecy all of this is, and that can also happen with who is being sent where and what conditions they're facing when they go there.

And are they released when they go to that country or are they held briefly in detention when they go to that country? These are all questions that have arisen because all of this and this push is so new.

What more do we know at this point about how the Trump administration is planning to expand on these deportations in the future? And how many countries are we ultimately talking about that could become a part of this expansion?

What are some of the roadblocks they're still running into?

Well, deportations are historically really hard to do, and there's a few reasons for that.

So for example, the United States has frosty relations with some countries around the world, and it can be hard to reach an agreement to send nationals of that country back, and that's because countries will not accept them.

Now, what this administration has tried to do to work around that is strike these agreements with what we call the third country, that they might not have any ties to, but allows the administration to, at the very least, deport them.

But even that, the administration has faced some hurdles because while they struck multiple agreements to make this happen, they're still relying on these countries to actually do the accepting.

One of the other challenges for the Trump administration has been detention.

Uh, so what do we mean by that? Those are facilities around the country.

What is going on there?

What are some of the roadblocks they're still running into?

Well, deportations are historically really hard to do, and there's a few reasons for that.

So for example, the United States has frosty relations with some countries around the world, and it can be hard to reach an agreement to send nationals of that country back, and that's because countries will not accept them.

Now, what this administration has tried to do to work around that is strike these agreements with what we call the third country that they might not have any ties to, but allows the administration to at the very least deport them.

But even that the administration has faced some hurdles because while they struck multiple agreements to make this happen, they're still relying on these countries to actually do the accepting.

One of the other challenges for the Trump administration has been detention.

Uh, so what do we mean by that? Those are facilities around the country.

What is going on there?

What kind of, of shift have we seen within DHS in terms of where it's placing attention and resources and where it's pulling back?

Well, I'd argue too that it has been an entire administration shift.

We saw multiple federal departments who were pulled into immigration work or information sharing with the Department of Homeland Security for the purpose of immigration enforcement, uh, in ways that we had not previously seen.

But to your question about the Department of Homeland Security, that has been a common theme also within Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

For example, Homeland Security Investigations is an arm, uh, within that agency.

They are typically worked, working on criminal investigations, fraud, uh, but they were pulled into the day-to-day enforcement operations as well, and there was some consternation about that just as much as there has been in other offices within the Department of Homeland Security.

Now, there is some precedent here in that during the first Trump administration, a similar shift happened where much of the department was solely focused on immigration.

W- what are you listening for during that hearing?

Wh- what happens now? Where are they physically located?

Well, they are going to basically stay where they are, um, they, they were at a nearby base, uh, last week when we were reporting on this, because again, as we saw, um, with these rulings, they can't, their deployments are halted, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they need to go back home as this case continues, uh, to unfold in the courts.

What has been interesting to s- watch, um, you just mentioned there, there's 200 of the 500 who are from Texas.

This had actually been a conversation within the administration for months.

My colleagues and I reported over the summer that the White House and the Department of Homeland Security were trying to find ways to use the National Guard and the military to bolster their immigration crackdown, and that did include exploring whether u- uh, National Guard units from Republican-led states, in this case Texas, could be used in non-consenting states, for example, Illinois, where the governor has pushed back multiple times.

Now, the National Guard, of course, can't make arrests, but it certainly speaks to a plan that's been underway for some time now of the administration wanting to use the military to further their immigration, uh, enforcement goals, and also, as the president has talked about, his federal crime crackdown.

Uh, and certainly what we're watching unfold in these blue cities is something that the administration had been thinking about from day one, the officials who were coming into the administration had already been talking about it quite publicly, uh, in the months leading into the president's inauguration.

What do we know about what kind of training they have before they're being put out on the streets?