How do I migrate file entities into media entities?
I ended up chosing to do it slightly different - I create a regular file import, set that migration as the source for my media entity reference field, and then applied a second process plugin 'MediaGenerate' to translate the FID to the new media target_id

&lt;?php

namespace Drupal\my_migration\Plugin\migrate\process;

use Drupal\media_entity\Entity\Media;
use Drupal\migrate\MigrateExecutableInterface;
use Drupal\migrate\MigrateException;
use Drupal\migrate\Row;
use Drupal\migrate_plus\Plugin\migrate\process\EntityGenerate;

/**
 * Generate a media entity with specified metadata.
 *
 * This plugin is to be used by migrations which have media entity reference
 * fields.
 *
 * Available configuration keys:
 * - destinationField: the name of the file field on the media entity.
 *
 * @code
 * process:
 *   'field_files/target_id':
 *     -
 *       plugin: migration
 *       source: files
 *     -
 *       plugin: media_generate
 *       destinationField: image
 *
 * @endcode
 *
 * @MigrateProcessPlugin(
 *   id = "media_generate"
 * )
 */
class MediaGenerate extends EntityGenerate {

/**
* {@inheritdoc}
*/
public function transform($value, MigrateExecutableInterface $migrateExecutable, Row $row, $destinationProperty) {
if (!isset($this-&gt;configuration['destinationField'])) {
  throw new MigrateException('Destination field must be set.');
}
// First load the target_id of the file referenced via the migration.
/* @var /Drupal/file/entity/File $file */
$file = $this-&gt;entityManager-&gt;getStorage('file')-&gt;load($value);

if (empty($file)) {
  throw new MigrateException('Referenced file does not exist');
}

// Creates a media entity if the lookup determines it doesn't exist.
$fileName = $file-&gt;label();
if (!($entityId = parent::transform($fileName, $migrateExecutable, $row, $destinationProperty))) {
  return NULL;
}
$entity = Media::load($entityId);

$fileId = $file-&gt;id();
$entity-&gt;{$this-&gt;configuration['destinationField']}-&gt;setValue($fileId);
$entity-&gt;save();

return $entityId;
}

}