The Trump administration will not move forward with plans to detain immigrants at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, the sprawling tri-service installation that straddles Burlington and Ocean counties in South Jersey. The reversal, confirmed through a federal watchdog report, closes out more than a year of confusion over a plan that once floated housing as many as 3,000 detainees at the base.
According to PhillyVoice, the Government Accountability Office reported that Defense Department and ICE officials confirmed they did not move forward with plans for detention facilities in either New Jersey or Indiana. As WHYY reports, U.S. Reps. Herb Conaway and Donald Norcross met with commanders at the joint base and learned they had been just as in the dark about the detention plans as the lawmakers themselves. Conaway represents the congressional district that includes the base, while Norcross sits on the House Armed Services Committee, per the same report.
The plan traces back to a July 15, 2025, letter in which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth approved Camp Atterbury in Indiana and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst for temporary use housing immigrant detainees, according to NPR. ICE had sought immediate access to both sites, and the Defense Department's approval was authorized only through September 30, 2025, contingent on ICE maintaining a round-the-clock oversight presence at each location, NPR reported at the time.
Conflicting Numbers, No Clear Timeline
Estimates of how many people the South Jersey base might have held varied depending on the source. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported figures ranging from 1,000 to 3,000 detainees, while the New Jersey Globe separately reported the base could be used to house up to 1,000 detainees. Neither figure was ever tested in practice, since no detainees were ultimately housed there.
By September 2025, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem acknowledged there was no approved construction plan or firm timeframe for beginning operations at the site, according to the New Jersey Globe. Noem said at the time that DHS was still assessing the viability of using the base for that purpose, the outlet reported. Conaway and Norcross had already requested more information about the administration's plans from DHS, per the Inquirer.
Lawmakers Call the Delay Unnecessary
Conaway and Norcross praised the administration for ultimately abandoning the plan, per WHYY, but argued the process took far too long. The two lawmakers said officials should not have needed more than a year to decide to abandon the plans, and they described the proposal to use the base for detention as a cruel and wasteful idea, according to WHYY's reporting. They added that the Department of Homeland Security and the Defense Department appeared to finally acknowledge the realities of a flawed plan.
The Defense Department confirmed in October 2025 that it no longer planned to build detention facilities on other military installations, according to PhillyVoice. Even so, ICE has not rescinded its underlying request for detention operations, and the Defense Department's original authorization remains active, per WHYY's reporting.
A Broader Pattern of Scrapped Plans
Camp Atterbury previously housed more than 7,000 Afghan evacuees during Operation Allies Welcome but had never held immigration detainees under enforcement authority, according to the Indiana Capital Chronicle. Like the New Jersey site, it was never actually used to detain immigrants once the plans stalled.
The abandoned base plan was part of a wider pattern of scaled-back detention initiatives. The Inquirer reported that by July 2026, ICE had scaled back four of six capacity-expansion initiatives launched since January 2025. Those included the purchase of 11 warehouses nationwide for roughly $1.07 billion between January and April 2026, before the administration pulled back and opted to sell seven of them, per PhillyVoice.
USA Today reported that the administration no longer plans to convert warehouses in Georgia and Utah into detention centers, and that ICE separately abandoned a detention-center project in Romulus, Michigan, moving to dispose of that warehouse as well. The three abandoned properties combined cost more than $300 million, according to USA Today.
A GAO analysis cited by PBS News found ICE spent $20 million on costs tied to the seven warehouses now slated for sale, money the agency will not recover. The same report noted the GAO found ICE still lacks a comprehensive strategic plan for spending the $45 billion Congress provided to expand detention capacity, despite the agency's detainee population climbing from 39,000 in January 2025 to 67,000 by July 30, 2026.
That growth has come even as individual facility plans collapsed. ICE's overall detainee population rose 71 percent to about 67,180 people between President Trump's inauguration and July 30, 2026, PhillyVoice reported, while the number of ICE detention centers nationwide more than doubled, from 134 to 272, over the same stretch.
