The Trump administration plans to use a military base in South Jersey to detain undocumented immigrants as part of its rapidly expanding enforcement program, federal officials told state lawmakers this week.
In a July 15 memo to U.S. Rep. Herb Conaway, a Democrat who represents New Jersey’s Third District, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said Joint Base Maguire-Dix-Lakehurst has been certified for temporary use by the Department of Homeland Security to house immigrant detainees.
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In the memo obtained by NJ Spotlight, Hegseth said the plan “will not negatively affect military training” and other operations at the base. The facility sits in parts of Burlington and Ocean counties, comprising an Air Force base that was consolidated with U.S. Army and Navy installations in 2009.
Hegseth’s memo also said Camp Aturberry, a military post operated by the Indiana National Guard, will be used for similar purposes.
In February, the Department of Homeland Security outlined a plan to use a range of military bases as staging sites for immigrants detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The New Jersey base — along with others in New York, Florida, Texas and Utah — was listed among the sites that could hold thousands of detainees awaiting deportation. The Trump administration also has expanded capacity for the program by contracting with dozens of prisons and jails, including government-owned and private facilities.
Joint Base Maguire-Dix-Lakehurst is the nation’s only base with service from the Air Force, Army and Navy. In years past, it has served as a haven for evacuees of military conflicts and natural disasters in other parts of the world, including refugees from Afghanistan who fled the Taliban in 2021.
Hegseth did not indicate how many detainees might be held at Joint Base Maguire-Dix-Lakehurst. New Jersey’s main immigrant detention facilities are Newark’s Delaney Hall and the Elizabeth Detention Center, both of which have drawn protests in North Jersey in recent months. About 1,000 people are thought to be held at those two facilities, according to the nonpartisan research center Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
Conaway, a former Air Force officer who served at the South Jersey base, rebuked the Trump administration’s plans.
“It is an abhorrent use of that vital resource, our vital resource,” Conaway told NJ Spotlight. “This activity on the part of the administration people are rightly viewing with revulsion.”
Several New Jersey Democrats, including Senators Cory Booker and Andy Kim, joined Conaway in condemning the plan at Joint Base Maguire-Dix-Lakehurst in a joint statement Friday.
“This is an inappropriate use of our national defense system and militarizes a radical immigration policy that has resulted in the inhumane treatment of undocumented immigrants and unlawful deportation of U.S. Citizens, including children, across the country,” the lawmakers said.
The Trump administration has set a target to arrest 1 million undocumented immigrants per year, a pace that has prompted unprecedented expansion of the nation’s detention capacity. Arrests from ICE raids reached about 1,000 per day in June, Bloomberg reported, and the Trump administration has added about 59,000 detention beds in the U.S. since Trump took office. About 3,000 people are expected to be held in Florida’s Everglades at the recently opened tent complex nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz.”
Conaway and other Democrats urged their Republican colleagues in New Jersey to resist using Joint Base Maguire-Dix-Lakehurst for immigrant detention.
“Using our country’s military to detain and hold undocumented immigrants jeopardizes military preparedness and paves the way for ICE immigration raids in every New Jersey community,” the lawmakers said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
