Credit: (NJ Spotlight News)WASHINGTON — The Trump administration plans to use a military base in New Jersey to detain immigrants, a stark expansion of the U.S. government’s footprint for its aggressive immigration enforcement stance in the state.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told lawmakers this week Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst and another site, Camp Atterbury in Indiana, would be used to hold immigrant detainees.
In a July 15 letter to Rep. Herb Conaway (D-3rd), Hegseth said the sites were chosen “for temporary use by the Department of Homeland Security to house illegal aliens,” adding that holding detainees at the bases “will not negatively affect military training, operations, readiness, or other military requirements, including National Guard and Reserve readiness.”
Conaway’s congressional district includes the base.
Credit: (Herb Conaway for Congress)“It’s not even correct to say it’s an inappropriate use of the military and our military installations,” Conaway said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News on Thursday night. “It is an abhorrent use of that vital resource, our vital resource,” he said. “This activity on the part of the administration people are rightly viewing with revulsion.”
Conaway said he does not know anything beyond the letter and will put a series of questions about how the base will be used to military officials.
Using the base for immigration detention purposes will get in the way of regular operations, he said. “It will interfere with readiness, it will interfere with military operations.”
Hegseth, a former Fox News host confirmed by the Senate in January in a 51-50 vote, provided limited details in his letter, which NJ Spotlight News obtained Thursday.
It’s unclear why the Pentagon selected the joint base, and spokespeople for the Defense Department, the base and DHS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Billions in new funding
Buoyed with a fresh injection of $150 billion for its immigration agenda, the Trump administration is eyeing national buildout of detention sites for immigrants and recently opened a facility in the Everglades, in Florida, administration officials have taken to calling “Alligator Alcatraz” after the infamous San Francisco prison.
That $150 billion came from a new domestic policy law the president signed into force this month.
The law allocates $45 billion alone for the expansion of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, facilities, such as the Delaney Hall site in Newark.
Overall, ICE operates 155 sites nationwide, according to the latest available agency data, and two of those sites are in New Jersey — Delaney Hall and the Elizabeth Detention Center.
ICE in New Jersey
With its 1,000-bed capacity, Delaney Hall is one of the largest ICE holding locations in the nation. Both Delaney Hall and the Elizabeth Detention Center are operated by private prison companies. It’s unclear if the planned detention center at the New Jersey military base would be operated by a private contractor.
ICE has a checkered record of safety, health and sanitation involving the people it incarcerates, many held without judicial review or criminal charges, independent investigations have found across both Democratic and Republican administrations.
According to data obtained by TRAC, a nonpartisan research group that analyzes federal records, 71.7% of the people in ICE detention nationwide as of June 29 do not have criminal records.
A former Air Force official who served as a medical officer on the base, Conaway said he thinks the base, which he called a potential “northeastern gulag” and compared to the Florida site, could be used as a hub to organize deportations.
“I think it may very well be that they’re planning on having a base of operations for ICE raids in New Jersey, perhaps New York and Pennsylvania, and having a ready jumping-off point or way station in the northeast for intense activity,” Conaway said. “What else could it be?”
History of the joint base
Spanning 41,000 acres in Burlington and Ocean counties, the joint base was established in 2009, following a formal Base Realignment and Closure, or BRAC process, that combined the former McGuire Air Force Base, Fort Dix Army Base, and Lakehurst Naval Air Station into a single unified facility, according to the joint base’s website.
As the only “tri-service” joint base in the Department of Defense, it is one of the largest military installations in the country, with more than 42,000 active-duty service members, civilians, and family members.
While the joint base was established nearly two decades ago, the military’s presence in the region goes back much further.
This includes the founding in Wrightstown, Burlington County, of a U.S. Army training camp in 1917, amid the outbreak of World War I, according to a 2014 article detailing its history that is posted on the website for today’s Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst.
In February, The New York Times revealed the administration was exploring the use of military sites across the U.S. — including the joint base in New Jersey — to assist in the detention of residents without legal documentation.
The same report stated the administration was working on establishing a deportation “hub” at Fort Bliss in Texas, which would serve as a model for the other locations. New Jersey’s base would operate as a satellite facility, along with bases in nine other states, including New York, California and Colorado.
Previous federal administrations have used military bases only as emergency shelters for undocumented children when the government’s shelter system has reached capacity.
— John Reitmeyer contributed reporting.
— Editor’s note: This story was updated at 12:30 a.m., Friday, July 18.
