The Department of Homeland Security is planning to house migrants at two new military installations as the Trump administration increasingly turns to the armed forces to bolster its aggressive immigration crackdown.
Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, colloquially referred to as “Fort Dix,” in New Jersey and Camp Atterbury in Indiana, both relatively low-profile installations, have been identified as housing sites. Fort Dix primarily serves as a schooling hub for National Guard and reserve troops, including noncommissioned officer academies. Camp Atterbury is a field training ground primarily for Guard units in the Midwest.
The move is part of a broader pattern of the administration militarizing its immigration enforcement. In recent weeks, California National Guard troops and Marines have assisted federal agents in immigration raids, operations that have swept up U.S. citizens.
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In Florida, Guard troops are staffing a hastily built migrant encampment in the Everglades, which the administration has dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.” Meanwhile, construction is underway at Fort Bliss, Texas, where the DHS is developing one of the largest migrant deportation sites in the country.
President Donald Trump is also using the high-security military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to hold migrants, though many of those migrants were deemed a “low threat.”
Some 9,000 active-duty troops are deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border, a mission that comes as units are spread thin juggling missions across the globe.
A joint statement from New Jersey Democrats condemned the idea of using Fort Dix as a detention site for migrants.
“This is an inappropriate use of our national defense system and military resources,” the 10 lawmakers said. The statement was issued by Sens. Cory Booker and Andy Kim, as well as Reps. Herb Conaway Jr.; Bonnie Watson Coleman; Rob Menendez; Frank Pallone; Nellie Pou; Donald Norcross; LaMonica McIver; and Josh Gottheimer.
The plan is “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,” the lawmakers added.
Fort Dix housed 11,000 Afghan refugees in 2021 and early 2022 following the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from that country after the Taliban seized power.
Camp Atterbury has also housed Afghans and Ukrainian refugees. During World War II, Atterbury was a prisoner-of-war camp with some 15,000 Italian and German prisoners throughout the war, according to Army records.
It’s unclear how many migrants would be placed at those bases, when those operations will start, or how Homeland Security plans to secure those migrants, though National Guard units could be deployed, as was the case in Florida.
In a letter to lawmakers, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed that bases being used as migrant camps would not affect day-to-day military operations, saying that the detainment of “illegal aliens will not negatively affect military training, operations, readiness or other military requirements, including National Guard and reserve readiness.”
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