Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst (JB MDL), a military facility that sprawls across eight towns in Burlington and Ocean Counties, is reportedly being considered by President Donald Trump as a potential detainment location for undocumented immigrants as part of his administration’s mass deportation efforts. That’s news to the area’s two local representatives.
Reps. Herb Conaway (D-Delran) and Chris Smith (R-Manchester) both told the New Jersey Globe yesterday that they had learned about the Trump administration’s prospective plan from reporting by the New York Times and other outlets, rather than from the administration itself. But the two congressmen – one a Democrat in office for less than two months, another a Republican who’s been in Washington for 44 years – had differing opinions on whether the plan itself was a good idea.
Conaway, who represents the western half of the base in Burlington County, said that detaining immigrants did not fit the intended purpose of JB MDL, at which the Air Force, Navy, and Army all have substantial presences.
“I am concerned about the use of the military for these mass deportations at the outset. It’s not an appropriate use of our national defense system,” he said. “It’s just not part of the military’s mission to be involved in these sorts of operations. My hope is – it’s a faint hope – that there’ll be a reconsideration by the administration of using our military in this way.”
Himself an Air Force veteran, Conaway noted that the base has been used in the past for housing large numbers of people, like when more than 10,000 Afghan refugees were housed at the base after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan – but that, he said, was an appropriate emergency use of the base, unlike any deportation program Trump seeks to implement.
“The Afghan refugees were a part of a withdrawal from wartime operations,” Conaway said. “This is a situation that doesn’t involve wartime, and therefore should not require our standing Air Force, Army, and Navy to be involved in these kinds of operations.”
Smith, who represents the eastern Ocean County part of the base, was far more sanguine about the detainment plan, similarly citing the Afghan refugee example as evidence that it could be pulled off.
“If we have the capacity there, and we have the ability to ensure that there [aren’t] safety issues for the personnel at the base, then I’d be for it,” said Smith, who has a long history with the base, including fighting against its closure with former Rep. Jim Saxton (R-Mount Holly) in the 1990s.
Smith added that he believes the Trump administration is focusing its early deportation efforts on “the worst of the worst” – murderers and rapists who are in the country illegally – though Trump’s deportation goals clearly go beyond just violent criminals, and reporting on the administration’s plans doesn’t indicate that military bases would only house such offenders.
Any changes that might be coming to JB MDL could still be a ways away. The Trump administration is reportedly focusing on Fort Bliss, a base near El Paso in Texas, as its initial staging ground for deportations, which could then serve as a model for other bases across the country like JB MDL sometime in the future.
That may give New Jersey time to prepare; Smith and Conaway both said that they plan to talk to local officials and JB MDL leaders soon, but have not done so yet. But given the Trump administration’s tendency to move quickly and abruptly – oftentimes without consulting local elected officials, as seems to have been done in this case – things could change at any moment.
“I think they’re moving at warp speed,” Smith said.
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