President Donald Trump’s administration intends to house immigration detainees at a South Jersey military base, naming it as one of two sites now certified to assist in the president’s plan for mass deportations.

Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, which spreads through Burlington and Ocean Counties, was approved to confine immigrants by U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, according to a July 15 letter he sent to U.S. Rep. Herb Conaway. The Democrat and Air Force veteran sits on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, and his district includes parts of the 42,000-acre facility.

It was not clear when immigrant detainees might arrive or how many might be held at the base. The Defense Department said people would be confined in “temporary soft-sided holding facilities.”

Conaway, along with U.S. Sens. Cory Booker and Andy Kim and seven other members of the House of Representatives, on Friday said they condemned the Trump administration’s decision “in the strongest possible terms.”

“This is an inappropriate use of our national defense system and military resources,” the elected Democrats said in a joint statement, one that escalates “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.”

They called on Republican colleagues in New Jersey to urge the administration to reverse the action, saying that “using our country’s military to detain and hold undocumented immigrants jeopardizes military preparedness and paves the way for ICE immigration raids in every New Jersey community. We have the greatest military in the world and using it as a domestic political tool is unacceptable and shameful.”

Efforts to reach Conaway were unsuccessful Friday. The news about the base was first reported by NJ Spotlight News.

In his letter, Hegseth said having the Department of Homeland Security house what he called “illegal aliens” would not hurt training, operations, readiness, or other military requirements, including National Guard and Reserve readiness.

The other military site named was Camp Atterbury in Indiana.

New Jersey already is home to two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities, Delaney Hall in Newark and the Elizabeth Detention Center in Elizabeth.

ACLU-NJ Executive Director Amol Sinha said expanding immigration detention onto military bases “sets a dangerous precedent and is contrary to the values embedded in our Constitution.”

“New Jersey already has the largest detention facility on the Eastern Seaboard, Delaney Hall, and with this expansion into Fort Dix, our state will continue to be the epicenter of President Trump’s mass deportation agenda.”

He called on lawmakers to exercise their oversight authority, to ensure New Jersey is not “complicit in the Trump administration’s extreme agenda that continues to violate fundamental rights and undermine our democracy.”

A spokesperson for Gov. Phil Murphy said the governor opposes the plan and “believes this is a gross misuse of U.S. military resources.”

The Burlington County Board of Commissioners said in a statement that “people who are unlawfully present in our country should be lawfully returned to their home country,” but the board had “become increasingly concerned about overaggressive enforcement actions” by Homeland Security, ICE, and other federal agencies.

“This kind of overzealous, and in some cases — unlawful — enforcement, threaten our citizens’ rights, safety and the culture of community we hold dear,“ the statement said. ”Instead of making our country stronger, they cause fear and division, and that has no place in our federal military installations or in Burlington County."

The Ocean County Board of Commissioners said in a statement that the matter “falls under the jurisdiction of the federal government, and decisions as such are made on the federal level. We remain committed to serving our residents here in Ocean County and will continue to monitor any developments as appropriate.”

Pemberton Mayor Jack Tompkins, whose township abuts the military installation on the south, could not be reached for comment.

Some South Jersey leaders said they were unaware of the authorization before Friday.

“I don’t know enough about the proposal to form an opinion on it,” said David Frank, mayor of Springfield Township, which touches the installation to the west. “We’ve had no official communications on the matter.”

Trump’s goal of mass deportations is challenged not only by Democrats, but by logistics. The administration needs beds and space.

An effort to deport millions of people — about 13.7 million undocumented migrants live in the United States — requires a federal mobilization of people, facilities, and dollars. And the surge of immigration arrests under Trump is already crowding the detention system.

ICE had nearly 58,000 immigrants in custody as of June 29, up from about 39,000 the week after Trump was inaugurated in January. More than 70% of those held by ICE have no criminal convictions, statistics show.

ICE also tracks an additional 184,000 people through its Alternatives to Detention program, which allows immigrants to live freely while being monitored by electronic devices and check-ins.

Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst is the Defense Department’s only tri-service base, a hub with global reach, responsible for providing mission support, airlift, air refueling, and combat air power.

A spokesperson at the base referred questions on immigration detention to the Defense Department and to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE referred all questions to Defense.

Officials there said the timeline for building the holding facilities would depend on the requirements of the operation and coordination with the Department of Homeland Security.

The base was created by the 2009 combination of three installations: McGuire Air Force Base, once known as Rudd Field; the Army’s Fort Dix; and the Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst, perhaps best-known as the site of the Hindenburg disaster in 1937.

But the base has also served to house big, new populations — none of whom had been involuntarily forced onto a military installation to await deportation. That would represent a dramatic change, from housing people eager to start new lives in the United States, to confining those whom the government wants to kick out.

In 2021, amid the chaotic evacuation of Kabul as Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, the base was one of eight U.S. military installations to serve as “safe havens” for evacuated war allies and their families. The encampment known as “Liberty Village” was basically a small town on a military base, home to 3,377 families, three times the size of Cape May, N.J.

To house the Afghan allies, some of the base’s existing brick housing was supplemented by what were called tents, though those structures were hardened and more resilient than canvas.

In 2010, the base served as a relief center for evacuees who arrived after a devastating earthquake in Haiti. In 1999, then-Fort Dix provided temporary shelter to hundreds of Kosovo refugees amid the Kosovo War. And way back during the Cold War, from 1955 to 1957, Fort Dix housed Hungarian refugees fleeing Soviet repression.

Trump has pledged to conduct the largest deportation operation in U.S. history, and recently achieved a huge increase in budgeting for ICE, from about $8 billion to roughly $28 billion, to help him do so.

Some polls, however, show softening public support for Trump’s immigration policies. In June, a national Quinnipiac University poll of registered voters showed 54% disapproved of the president’s handling of immigration issues, with 43% approving. Additionally, 56% disapproved of his handling of deportations, with 40% approving.

New Jersey is a “sanctuary state,” which attempts to limit its cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, a status that emerged as a major issue in the spring primary contests for governor.

One Democratic candidate — South Jersey’s Steve Sweeney — joined all of the Republicans in saying they would end the policy, while Democrats talked mostly about how to expand it.

The November election will see Democratic U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill face Republican former state assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli in the contest to replace Democratic incumbent Murphy.

Legally, the Department of Defense can make military bases available to any federal, state, or local law-enforcement officials for law-enforcement purposes, according to the National Immigration Law Center. For instance, in 2014, amid a crush of migrants from Central America, President Barack Obama housed thousands of children who were fleeing El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras on military bases in Texas, Oklahoma, and California.

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