Two South Jersey Congressman visited Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst on Friday to see what plans were in place for an immigration detention center on the base. (Matthew Enuco/nj.com via TNS)
(Tribune News Service) — Commanders at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst are just as uninformed about Department of Homeland Security plans for an immigration detention center on the base as two of New Jersey’s House representatives are.
“They are as much in the dark as we are about what might happen,” Rep. Herb Conaway, D-N.J., said Friday at a press briefing near the base.
Conaway and Rep. Donald Norcross, D-N.J., met with military officials at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst on Friday to learn more about plans for an immigrant detention center on the 40,000 acre base in Burlington County after receiving a notification from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on July 17.
Conaway and Norcross spoke to the deputy commander of the base and other officials during their visit Friday.
“While there has been a notification by DOD that the facility here at Joint Base McGuire ... might be used to house one of these facilities, they have not been ordered, as of yet, to prepare for the location of one of these facilities,” Conaway said.
The decision to use U.S. military bases as immigrant detention centers follows the Trump administration’s plan to round up undocumented immigrants around the country and expedite deportation efforts.
In a letter sent to Conaway and the House Armed Services Committee, Hegseth said that the use of Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst as a temporary holding facility by the Department of Homeland Security for immigrant detainees would not impact the base’s regular operations.
“I have never in my eleven years of being in Congress been shut out by our own government trying to get the information on what might or might not happen on a base that happens to be in our backyard,” Norcross said Friday.
Norcross and Conaway are members of the House Armed Services Committee.
Including Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst as a New Jersey detention center would add between 1,000 and 3,000 beds to the state’s immigrant detention capacity, Conaway explained. Delaney Hall in Newark has a 1,000-bed capacity.
If a facility is eventually built on the base, operations would fall to the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Conaway explained.
Following Hegseth’s letter, Conaway, alongside Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman, LaMonica McIver, Robert Menendez Jr. and several other New Jersey representatives and both senators condemned the decision to use the base as a holding facility.
“We condemn in the strongest possible terms the decision by the Trump Administration to use Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst as an immigrant detention center,” the representatives said in the statement.
“This is an inappropriate use of our national defense system and military resources; escalating 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.”
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