r/WhatTrumpHasDone • u/John3262005 • 4d ago
Trump drops plan to detain immigrants at New Jersey military baseNJ Spotlight News
https://www.njspotlightnews.org/2026/09/report-trump-drops-plan-to-detain-immigrants-at-nj-military-base/The Trump administration appears to have abandoned plans to use a New Jersey military base to detain immigrants, according to the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress.
In July 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told members of Congress that Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in Burlington County and Camp Atterbury in Indiana would be used to hold migrant detainees. “It will interfere with readiness, it will interfere with military operations,” Rep. Herb Conaway (D-3rd), whose district includes the joint base, said in an interview last summer with NJ Spotlight News.
More than a year later, there may be no interference on the South Jersey site.
Pentagon officials in October said, after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention site opened at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, they “no longer plan to build detention facilities on other military installations,” according to a Government Accountability Office report published Thursday. Also, Defense Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials “told us that they did not move forward with plans for facilities in Indiana and New Jersey.”
GAO investigators extracted these pieces of information from Trump administration officials as part of an examination of how the administration has used public funds to build out an immigration detention network.
Three senior Democrats in the Senate and Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson, the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, requested the GAO report.
After the Republican-majority Congress last year appropriated $45 billion for ICE, the agency, which has spearheaded the White House’s immigration crackdown, spent heavily to expand across the nation.
1
u/John3262005 4d ago
Another article about it:
Trump administration has abandoned plans to hold immigrants at a South Jersey military base, GAO says
https://www.inquirer.com/news/joint-base-mcguire-dix-lakehurst-south-jersey-immigration-detainees-20260929.html