Overview:
The Trump administration plans to detain immigrants at New Jersey’s Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, Documented reviews. Advocates warn the transfer militarizes civil immigration enforcement, echoing previous abuses like Japanese internment.
By Victoria Valenzuela, Documented Publish Date: Aug. 25, 2025
U.S. Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey is about to develop into one of many nation’s latest immigrant detention websites. In July 2025, the Trump administration introduced its plans to make use of the navy base to carry 1000’s of individuals going through deportation.
However immigrant justice advocates are involved that the navy base, with its capability to carry between 1,000 to three,000 immigrants in detention, could be repeating a shameful historical past of America’s previous when the nation used the navy in civil immigration affairs to incarcerate Japanese Individuals throughout World Struggle II. The bottom presently serves the Air Pressure, Military and Navy.
The extra lack of transparency about how the power will function makes advocates much more fearful as New Jersey contends with detention facilities already in operation, together with New Jersey’s Elizabeth Detention Middle with 1,300 beds and the recently opened 1,000-bed center, Delaney Hall.
“The usage of the navy for inside enforcement is deeply regarding,” stated Ami Kachalia, a marketing campaign strategist with the New Jersey chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). “What we’re seeing with Fort Dix is an overreach that we shouldn’t normalize in relation to the usage of navy amenities or navy assets for immigration detention.”
The usage of the Division of Protection (DOD) assets, workers and amenities in civil proceedings, is pretty unprecedented in recent times, Kachalia stated.
“This motion, in some methods, reopens a shameful chapter of U.S. historical past placing […] visa holders and long run residents in camps on a navy base, harkens again to a darkish period [of] Japanese internment, and we should be certain we’re studying from the previous and never repeating it,” Kachalia added.
Christopher Purdy, director of the Chamberlain Network, a company that “organizes veterans in protection of human rights,” stated that the usage of navy bases to carry immigrants originated as a humanitarian effort from the Biden administration in the course of the Afghan evacuation in 2021. Purdy, who served in Iraq in 2011 as a soldier and in addition previously labored on the Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, stated they airlifted 100,000 folks out of Kabul into navy bases world wide — together with Fort Dix — whereas they sought asylum. The Obama administration also held unaccompanied children at navy bases till 2014.
Right now, he says the Trump administration is doing the alternative. “As a substitute of taking folks out of hurt’s manner, what they’re truly doing is placing folks in peril.” Like Kachalia, Purdy believes the utilization of navy installations to conduct civil proceedings and detain immigrants echoes the incarceration of Japanese Individuals throughout World Struggle II.
“Utilizing the navy to implement civil regulation [and] immigration regulation is extremely harmful to this nation,” Purdy stated. “We’ve got a transparent separation between regulation enforcement and the navy for a purpose, and to make use of the navy on this manner goes to place lots of people in danger.”
Kachalia stated that she is worried that the usage of this infrastructure will end in much more enforcement that can affect New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York and Delaware. She is worried that the unsure timeline of this operation calls into query many issues reminiscent of circumstances and entry to adequate meals, heating and staffing.
Lack of transparency
After quite a few requests by the ACLU and members of Congress, the DOD and Division of Homeland Safety (DHS) have but to supply details about the bottom, a proven fact that considerations advocates fearful concerning the militarization of immigration enforcement and detention and what that can imply.
Sarah Mehta, deputy director of the ACLU’s immigration crew, stated that advocates are nonetheless making an attempt to study concerning the plans for Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst and hope to get extra details about who the immigrant inhabitants to be detained there can be, how lengthy they’re going to be in detention and if they are going to be deported from the bottom.
“These are usually not wartime operations,” Mehta stated. “These are usually not nationwide safety operations.”
She added that it was unclear if the navy would nonetheless be capable of use the bottom, or use the bottom for deportation flights. “We haven’t obtained a public reply about that but,” she stated, “but it surely may […] actually shift the best way that persons are detained. It might probably pace up their deportations in the event that they find yourself utilizing the airfields.”
It is usually unclear the place detained immigrants can be housed within the base. Purdy stated that there are trendy barracks in addition to World Struggle II period barracks there, however he’s not sure what sort of setting immigrants can be in.
He’s not the one one ignored of the loop.
Following the Trump administration’s memo asserting plans to detain immigrants at navy bases, New Jersey Congressmen Herb Conaway and Donald Norcross stated the administration has given them no details about the bottom, regardless of them requesting full transparency.
They asked the DOD and ICE administrators to supply them a timeline for operations and details about facility development and base operations, details about reimbursement and funding, detainee {qualifications}, and strategies of coordination with native authorities by mid-August.
“We condemn within the strongest attainable phrases the choice by the Trump administration to make use of Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst as an immigrant detention heart,” Congressman Conaway said in a press release. “That is an inappropriate use of our nationwide protection system and navy assets.”
Boundaries in entry to the power
Amongst considerations of transparency, Purdy stated that as members of Congress have been turned away from getting into immigrant detention amenities in California and New York to train their oversight, questions stay concerning the attainable extra blocks immigrants on the base will confront when making an attempt to acquire authorized counsel for his or her asylum or deportation hearings.
“That is simply one other barrier that’s going to be put up in entrance of their attorneys who’re going to have to seek out methods to get onto posts, and undergo one other checkpoint that might be weaponized to maintain attorneys out,” Purdy stated. “If a member of Congress can’t entry their authorized rights on this setting, what would an asylum legal professional be capable of do?”
Along with authorized counsel, he believes there are additionally going to be obstacles for protestors, who might be turned away from getting into the bottom.
Whereas protesting on the base may be tough, there are nonetheless methods to oppose it. Mehta stated that it can be crucial for folks to contact their members of Congress, the DOD, the DHS, and allow them to know that their communities don’t need the usage of the navy and their bases for use on this manner. She defined that Congress can train oversight and the general public can nonetheless make their opposition identified.
“I believe it’s actually essential for there to be as a lot vocal opposition as attainable, for folks to make their emotions identified to their native, state and federal representatives, and to attempt to push in opposition to this in order that they gained’t find yourself utilizing this base,” Mehta stated. “My understanding is it’s not presently in use, and there’s nonetheless hopefully a window of time to make use of public stress to cease its activation.”