New Jersey immigrant advocates slam ICE plan for military base detention center

As the Trump administration increasingly searches for new sites to put new immigrant detainees resulting from ramped-up immigration enforcement arrests and ICE raids, DHS is planning to use two military bases as ICE detention facilities. These are Camp Atterbury in Indiana and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey, colloquially referred to as “Fort Dix”. This announcement comes after Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”, signed into law on July 4, provided USD 45 billion in funding to expand ICE detention.

Immigrant rights activists in New Jersey, who have led a highly publicized struggle against Delaney Hall, the first new ICE detention center opened under the Trump administration, have slammed the plan to convert Fort Dix into a migrant detention facility. 

“This is a dangerous escalation of the federal government’s detention machine and a direct attack on New Jersey’s efforts to protect immigrant communities,” said Amy Torres, Executive Director of the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice. Congressman Herb Conaway, who served as a medical officer at Fort Dix, called the planned detention center a “northeastern gulag,” comparing it to Florida’s newly-minted detention facility “Alligator Alcatraz”.

Allegations of abuses have plagued Delaney Hall, which recently saw a spontaneous uprising by detainees following several days of inadequate food. But immigrant rights organizers claim Fort Dix poses an entirely new challenge for detainees and advocates. “Unlike New Jersey’s two private detention centers, Fort Dix will operate entirely under federal control, shielding it from accountability and making it nearly impossible for advocates, attorneys, and families to monitor conditions or support detained individuals,” according to Amy Torres.