The Trump administration intends to accommodate immigration detainees at the Big South Jersey military base, calling it one of two certified places currently to support the president’s plan for mass deportations.
Common McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst database, which spreads through Burlington and Ocean FlamesAccording to the letter of July 15, Herba Conaway, was approved to limit immigrants by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegeth. Democrat and Air Force veteran sits on the Committee on Veterans of the Chamber, and its district includes parts of a 42,000 acres facility.
It was unclear when the first detained immigrants arrived or how much could be kept at the base.
Conaway together with the US senators Cory Booker and Andy Kim and seven members of the Congress said on Friday that they condemned the decision of Trump’s administration “in the strongest possible conditions.”
“This is the wrong use of our national defense system and military resources,” said selected democrats in a common statement that escalates the “radical immigration policy, which led to the inhuman treatment of undocumented immigrants and the unlawful deportation of American citizens, including children, throughout the country.”
They called for republican colleagues in New Jersey to call the administration to reverse the action, saying that “the use of our country’s army to stop and maintain undocumented immigrants threatens military readiness and paves the way to immigration on ice in every community from a new shirt. We have the greatest army in the world and use them as a national political tool.
Efforts to reach Conaway were not immediately successful on Friday. The news about the database was first reported by NJ Spotlight News.
In his letter, HegeSeth said that having the security room of the internal department of what he called “illegal aliens” would not hurt military training, operations, readiness or other military requirements, including the national guard and reserve readiness.
The second military site was Camp Atterbury in Indiana.
New Jersey is already a house for two ice custody outlets, Delaney Hall in Newark and Elizabeth arrest in Elizabeth.
The executive director of ACLU-NJ, Amol Sinha, said on Friday that the extension of immigration stop to military bases “is a perilous precedent and is contrary to the values set in our constitution.
“New Jersey already has the largest detention facilities on the east coast, Delaney Hall, and with this extension to Fort Dix, our state will continue to be the epicenter of the mass deportation program of President Trump.”
She called for senators and members of the Congress to perform the supervisory authority to make sure that New Jersey is not “complicit in the extreme Trump administration program, which still violates the basic rights and undermines our democracy.”
Selected leaders of the Ocean and Council of Commissioners of Burlington could not immediately contact the commentary on Friday. Mayor Pemberton Jack K. Tompkins, whose town adheres to the military installation in the south, could not be reached either.
Some southern leaders Jersey said they were not aware of the authorization before Friday’s morning.
“I don’t know enough about the proposal to formulate an opinion on this subject,” said David Frank, the mayor of Springfield Township, who touches the installation in the West. “We didn’t have official communication in this matter.”
Trump’s goal of mass deportations is questioned not only by Democrats, but by logistics. The administration needs beds and space to keep immigrants.
All efforts to deport millions of people – About 13.7 million undocumented migrants live in the USA – Requires federal mobilization of people, objects and dollars. And the boost in immigration arrests under Trump’s rule is already crowded.
ICE had almost 58,000 immigrants in custody from June 29, compared to about 39,000 a week after the inauguration of Trump in January. Statistics show that over 70% of people owned by ICE have no criminal convictions.
ICE also follows an additional 184,000 people through an alternative to a stop program, which allows immigrants to live freely, while monitored by electronic devices and controls.
The common McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst base is the only base of the defense department, a center with a global range responsible for ensuring mission support, aircraft, air refueling and air force.
The spokesman in the database addressed questions about immigration stopping to the defense department and to enforce immigration and customs law. ICE gave all questions to defense, which did not immediately answer the request for comment.
The basis was created by a combination of three installations in 2009: McGuire Air Force base, once known as Rudd Field; Fort Dix of the Army; I Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst, perhaps best known as Place of Hindenburg disaster in 1937.
But the base also served home, novel populations – none of which were involuntarily forced to the military base to wait for the deportation. This would be a dramatic change, from housing populations willing to start a novel life in America, to limiting those whom the government wants to throw away.
In 2021, among the confused evacuation of Kabul, when Afghanistan fell on the Taliban, the base was one of eight American military installations, which served as “safe noses” for evacuated war allies and their families. The camp known as “Liberty Village” was essentially a compact town in a military base, home for 3377 families, three times larger than Cape May, NJ
To accommodate Afghan allies, some of the existing brick bases of the base were supplemented with so -called tents, although these structures were hardened and more resistant than canvas.
Ten years earlier in 2010, the base served as a support center Evacuates who arrived after the destructive earthquake in Haiti. In 1999, the then DIX provided a short-lived shelter Hundreds of refugees in Kosovo among the war in Kosovo. And during the Cold War, in the years 1955–1957, Hungarian refugees fleeing from Soviet repression lived in Fort Dix.
Legally The Department of Defense may provide military bases According to the National Center for Immigration Law for every federal, state or local law enforcement officials for law enforcement agencies. For example, in 2014, among Migrants from Central America, President Barack Obama settled thousands of children who escaped from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in military bases in Texas, Oklahomie and California.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
