New Jersey's Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst to be used for immigrant detention
Congressional democrats in New Jersey are for agreeing to a request by the Department of Homeland Security to set up temporary immigrant detention facilities at
The military facility is in both Burlington and Ocean counties.
A defense department spokesperson said the timeline will depend on operational requirements and coordination with DHS. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that, like Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, Camp Atterbury in Indiana can also house detained immigrants without affecting military readiness.
Officials have not yet said if other military bases are under consideration.
New Jersey Congressman Herb Conaway posted a on Friday.
The video's caption reads in part,
"I received a letter from Secretary Hegseth that Joint Base McGuire in NJ is opening a ICE detention center on its base. First they made Alligator Alcatraz. Now… it's the Garden State Gulag.
Our military's forces should not be carrying this burden. It's an inappropriate use of military resources and an escalation of an immigration policy that has seen inhumane conditions of detaining undocumented immigrants. The last thing I want to see are these kinds of conditions in our state."
Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Trump's border czar Tom Homan said there are about 60,000 beds currently available for detained immigrants, and the goal is to expand to 100,000.
"Every criminal alien we arrest on the street before we deport them, they need a bed. Because it takes several days, several weeks, several months actually to move them," said Homan, on Friday. "The faster we get the beds, the more people we can take off the street."
Hegseth said the presence of the detainees would not negatively affect the bases' operations or training.
A spokesperson for the New Jersey Governor's Office said Gov. Phil Murphy also stands against the temporary immigrant detention plan at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst.
"The Governor opposes any effort by the Trump Administration to use Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst as an immigration detention center. He believes this is a gross misuse of U.S. military resources."
Amol Sinha, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, said in a statement that housing immigrants in military facilities sets a dangerous precedent, "and is contrary to the values embedded in our Constitution."
Both of the bases identified by Hegseth have housed Afghan or Ukrainian refugees in recent years.
During Trump's first administration, he authorized the use of military bases to detain immigrant children, including Army installations at Fort Bliss and Goodfellow Air Force Base in Texas.
In 2014, President Barack Obama temporarily relied on military bases to detain immigrant children while ramping up privately operated family detention centers to hold many of the tens of thousands of Central American families who crossed the border.
