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Hegseth Arrives At Guantanamo, Tours Migrant Detention Facilities; Southwest Jet Narrowly Avoids Hitting Private Plane In Chicago; Judge Declines To Toss Genetic Evidence In Idaho Murders Case; Man Whose Stolen Credit Card Was Used To Buy Winning Lottery Ticket Offers To Split Prize With Missing Thieves. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired February 25, 2025 - 13:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth just arrived at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a short time ago. He is visiting migrant detention facilities at the U.S. naval base, even as the Trump administration is pausing plans to keep deportees in tents there.

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN HOST: Now, right now, there are only about two dozen migrants being held at Guantanamo, despite the administration promising or, I guess, making plans to hold more there.

CNN's Priscilla Alvarez is here with us.

So what is the defense secretary hoping to accomplish with this visit?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, a lot of this is seeing what has been done. Of course, there is the detention facility, and there's also the Migrant Operation Center, which has been used before for migrants interdicted at sea, different than what is happening now.

Now he follows the Homeland Security secretary, who similarly visited Guantanamo Bay earlier this month to, again, take a look at what it is that they are doing because, as you described there, there is an emerging tent facility that has been built to house migrants.

Now, our reporting is that they have since halted that effort for two reasons. One, there just weren't enough migrants coming to support building more. But number two, because of the conditions.

Now, when you hold migrants, even here in the United States, there are certain detention standards that have to be met if you're holding them for prolonged periods.

And these tents were not meeting that for two reasons at least, no air conditioning in Guantanamo Bay, which is near -- quite hot. And also no electricity.

So without those two things, they just weren't meeting the standards to hold people for long periods of time. Now, when senior Trump officials talk about this, they say it's a

staging area before migrants are deported. But what we saw with the over 170 who were there is that they we're there for a few days before they were sent to Venezuela.

So all of this is really the defense secretary seeing this, but also, behind the scenes, what we're being told is that there's just so much confusion about how exactly this is supposed to work.

There are, to your point, fewer migrants there than there were last week, for example, after 170 or so were sent back to Venezuela. And we are slowly learning more about those who are there, which don't all meet the worst-of-the-worst category that the Trump administration has cast them to be.

KEILAR: On the tents, though, file it under where we see many things, things that should have been thought through a little more. Right?

And then we've also been hearing some frustrations from those inside the administration about the number of deportations that they're seeing. How is the White House planning to ramp things up with migrant arrests?

ALVAREZ: I get messages from sources on this all the time. There are very tense calls happening between Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the White House, because they want those arrest numbers to go up.

Now, there's two things that the White House border czar has already outlined to do that. It is increasing the number of teams that are out in the U.S. trying to target these undocumented immigrants.

If -- he says, those with criminal records. That means bringing in all parts of government, the DEA, FBI, ATF, to help with these arrests.

The other part of this is what is called targeting lists. They had that over the last few weeks, which is to say, they know exactly who they're going after and why they're going after them.

[13:35:04]

But after you deplete that list, you have to build that list again. So they are working on the production of that and bringing in more people to do that.

It is not necessarily them going out blind to go after some people who do have serious criminal records. But the numbers still aren't where they want them to be.

And that is a reality of immigration enforcement in the United States. It is very hard to find these people, to identify them sometimes. But in addition to that, there's just so few resources and personnel.

So that's going to be a big ask moving forward to with Congress to try to get those funds, because with what they're working with right now, it is hard to accomplish the numbers that they want to do, even as they seek help, even from private contractors.

JIMENEZ: Now, the pace that many campaigned on, it just hasn't met reality at this point.

Priscilla Alvarez, always appreciate you being here. Thanks for the reporting.

We want to turn now to some breaking developments. An air crash that was avoided. And it's caught on camera.

Look at this Southwest jet at Midway Airport in Chicago. You see, it's on the verge of touching down this morning. The landing gear is just about to hit the ground. You see it there. And look at that plane right there.

KEILAR: Unbelievable. Suddenly, that smaller private plane just appears crossing the runway. And the airliner, thank goodness, manages and has the space to bring the nose back up and do a go round here.

We have CNN aviation correspondent, Pete Muntean, with us.

What else are you learning about what happened here, Pete?

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: This was an incredibly close call, Brianna and Omar. In fact, one source at the FAA just called me and told me, "No putting lipstick on this pig." Really hard to get around this.

And the questions here now, why was that private jet taxiing in front of the Southwest flight as it was coming in to land on Runway 31 Center there? Southwest 20504 from Omaha, Nebraska, only feet away from touching down when this flight, Flexjet 560, a Challenger 350, built by Bombardier, taxis right across the runway there.

We have listened back to the air traffic control audio, which sort of describes a confusing exchange between the controllers and the tower who operate the taxiways -- that's called ground -- telling this private jet to hold short of Runway 31 Center there. Meaning don't cross it, come up to it, but don't go across it.

And then we can hear from the tower exchanges with the Southwest crew, which went around unprompted, by the way, a textbook aborted landing here, asking the tower, why did that happen?

I want you to listen to that exchange now.

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SWA2504: Tower, Southwest 2504. How'd that happen?

ATC: Southwest 2504, climb, maintain 3,000. Contact Chicago. Approach 128.2.

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MUNTEAN: So those are the departure instructions from the tower there. After an aborted landing, you've got to get the plane set back up around for another landing.

It ultimately ended. Nobody hurt in this case. Plane made a successful landing. But some really big questions here about how this could take place.

And this really fits into a larger narrative of these close calls on or near the runways of major airports in the United States.

Since the start of 2023, the National Transportation Safety Board has investigated about 13 of these near-collisions. They're called runway incursions. Essentially, when an airplane is on the runway, when it shouldn't be.

You probably remember some of these -- JFK, Austin, Boston, Burbank, the list goes on and on.

Likely that the NTSB will investigate something like this because it is so serious. The rules in aviation are written in blood and a lot of lives could have been lost here.

Thankfully, that crew of the Southwest plane did that go around unprompted, got the airplane back into the air. This one is going to be in the aviation textbooks and studied for a long, long time.

We're still waiting to find out exactly how close the two airplanes were. Hard to tell there with the camera parallax, but it looks like it was terribly close.

KEILAR: Couple -- couple of questions here, Pete. One, it sounds like air traffic control didn't answer the pilots question. It was a little bit rhetorical. Am I wrong on that?

And also, you know, you look at that business jet, should it have been able to see the Southwest passenger plane coming in?

MUNTEAN: A lot of questions here for investigators. And sadly, the issue at airports so often is that sometimes the design of an airport essentially builds in a blind spot. Occasionally they call that a hot spot at airports.

Sometimes you just can't see everything from the front flight deck of an airplane because of where windshield posts are, how far back the windshield goes. You can't see everything perfectly. So there's some big questions there that investigators will have to figure out.

The ATC exchange doesn't really detail whether or not the controllers sort of accept any blame here.

And remember, air traffic controllers are under tremendous stress right now. Not only are they working mandatory six day weeks of 10 hour shifts, but also, they just had to individually answer Elon Musk's email explaining what they have done over the last week, essentially justifying their jobs.

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The air traffic control system in the U.S. is terribly short staffed, and we know that controllers are really pushed to the limit right now.

KEILAR: Yes.

JIMENEZ: Short staffing existed for -- for a while to this point.

Pete Muntean, really appreciate the reporting perspective, as always.

KEILAR: Some newly unsealed court documents shedding new light on the murders of four University of Idaho students as a suspect prepares to go on trial.

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KEILAR: Newly unsealed court documents revealing a push to suppress evidence in the case against quadruple murder suspect, Bryan Kohberger. He's accused in the 2022 stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students.

According to the transcript of a recent hearing, Kohberger's attorney tried to get DNA evidence tossed, accusing investigators of inappropriately accessing a genealogy database to find possible suspects.

Ultimately, the defense's attempt to block that evidence was not successful.

CNN's Jean Casarez is here with more on this.

Jean, tell us what you're learning.

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we found out a lot of new things. This was a transcript from a hearing that was completely sealed. The courtroom was closed. You couldn't even watch it or be in the courtroom.

But now it's been unsealed. And here's what we've learned. Many things. But while the time that law enforcement was having press conferences trying to find out who owned a white car that was driving around the area at the time that these killings occurred, asking anyone for help, they did not have the name of Bryan Kohberger.

It was not until unknown DNA from the snap on the knife sheath that was found partially under the body of Maddie Mogan. That unknown DNA was sent for genetic genealogy testing.

And once they did family tree, and then it got in the hands of the FBI. The FBI told Idaho, here's who you need to look at. His name is Bryan Kohberger.

Now we have, from the transcript, a quote from the lead investigator for Idaho, and he says, quote, -- and that is Brett Payne.

He said, "That was a result of investigative genetic genealogy that was being undertaken by the FBI. We had a phone call that evening and we were told Bryan Kohberger's name."

Now genetic genealogy is where they take that unknown DNA, put it in a public database to see if anybody in that public database at all has any bit or part of that unknown DNA.

They construct family trees. They do old-fashioned investigative work. And we now know from this case that, on November 22nd, they took that unknown DNA personally from Idaho down to Houston, Texas, to other labs. It is a foremost premiere genetic genealogy laboratory.

And here's the work that we found out through a defense witness that Offeram (ph) did. They put that DNA in the database and they originally found two main DNA matches. And it was low matches.

And then they found those people were cousins. They traced them to -- descended from second-great-grandparents but brought it all the way down to four living brothers.

They did not have the last name of Kohberger. But they were given the information and they told the FBI, contact one of these living brothers to see if they will submit their DNA.

Well, the FBI, according to the defense transcript here, they did do that. And the living brother, not named Kohberger at all, said, no, don't contact me.

So the defense is trying to show that this was done inappropriately, that the work by the FBI or potentially the laboratory were using sites that they should not have had access to.

Now we've reached out to the FBI. We do know the FBI uses this as an investigative tip.

We also know that the trial judge, in Kohberger, in not suppressing this genetic information, said that if there was anything that -- like that happened, that was not a constitutional issue and it was not something that would warrant this to be suppressed at all.

One more thing I've got to tell you. We didn't know, but blood was found on the handrail between the second and third floors in that home, co-mingled with DNA.

And from everything we know, that DNA was not tested at all, that they were relying on Bryan Kohberger.

But here is what prosecutors say is the most important of all. Once he was arrested, they did a DNA swabbing test inside his cheek to get his own DNA from him.

And according to legal documents, that was a match that was conclusive with the DNA that was found on that knife button of the knife sheath.

KEILAR: Oh, that is very interesting.

Jean Casarez, thank you so much for walking us through that. We do appreciate it. [13:49:36]

And coming up, picture this, your credit card is stolen. Then the thieves use it to buy a winning lottery ticket. What would you do next? I have an idea. Well, that happened to a guy in France. Hear his story ahead.

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JIMENEZ: Welcome back, everyone. We are following a pretty unbelievable story out of France. A man's credit card is stolen, and the thieves used it to buy a winning lottery ticket. So what do you do?

KEILAR: What do you do? I know what I would do.

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CNN's Melissa Bell is in Paris. She knows what this guy did.

Melissa, this story is wild.

MELISSA BELL, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, for a start, what are the odds, right? This is a guy, left his car, came back to it, saw it had been broken in, realized his wallet was missing, canceled the card, but realized that 50 Euros had been spent.

So went along to the bar where the 50 Euros had been spent and found out from the barkeeper that two men had come in, put some cigarettes, other stuff, and this winning ticket.

They told him, and they ran off so excited that they left everything else they had.

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But here's the thing, he can't now claim the money, even though it's been booked with his credit card, bought with his credit card, simply because he doesn't have the ticket. It is the thieves who have the ticket somewhere.

What we do know is that neither of them have yet tried to claim the money, more than 500,000 Euros, by the way. It's a huge win that they managed to get with their single card on that day with the stolen credit card of this guy.

They -- he can't collect it. So he's come up with this interesting plan. He's gone to French radio with an appeal, saying that if they come forward with the tickets, then they can share the money.

With it, he says he's going to buy himself a house.

JIMENEZ: Well, OK. I mean, I guess I don't know what to do. That's such a scenario, I wouldn't even think of it in my head.

So, Melissa Bell, thank you for bringing us that reality. Incredible. So want to know what you would do, Brianna? That's for later on.

Anyway, thank you, Melissa.

A lot more news ahead, including ultimatum confusion. Federal workers trying to figure out whether or not they should or have to reply to Elon Musk's email telling them to explain their work. We're following the latest. Stay tuned.

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