New Jersey has two immigrant detention facilities currently in operation, and reported plans to build a third in western Morris County have drawn the ire of the state’s entire Democratic congressional delegation.
The Washington Post reported in December that, per Immigration and Customs Enforcement documents, the Trump administration intends to renovate nearly two dozen warehouses around the country for the purposes of immigrant detention. One such warehouse could be in Roxbury Township, supplementing New Jersey’s detention capacity by between 500 and 1,500 beds.
In a letter to the leaders of ICE and the Department of Homeland Security today, all ten Democrats in the state’s congressional delegation objected to the plan, demanding that DHS “immediately abandon any plans to expand detention capacity in New Jersey.” The letter also asks that the members receive a written response with more details about the plan by February 2.
“Any expansion of immigrant detention in New Jersey, especially under warehouse conditions that are fundamentally inappropriate for human habitation, contradicts both the interests and values of our state,” reads the letter, which was authored by Reps. Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City), Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing), and LaMonica McIver (D-Newark), who have generally taken the lead in the state’s fight against Trump administration immigration policies.
In the Post’s original story, the Trump administration did not confirm ICE’s plans or provide any additional details, and New Jersey’s representatives have not gotten confirmation of the plans beyond what’s been reported, either.
Roxbury is located in Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield)’s congressional district; Kean’s office declined to comment.
Local elected officials, though, have not held back on criticizing the proposal despite the fact that the conservative-leaning town has an all-Republican government. Last night, the township council unanimously passed a resolution opposing any potential detention center plans, with officials saying they’ve heard nothing from the Trump administration.
“The safety and protection of our residents, their property and their services have always been and will continue to be this council’s highest priority,” Mayor Shawn Potillo said after last night’s resolution passed, per News 12.
Roxbury has also hosted a number of protests against the plan since the beginning of the year, some of which have featured one of the Democratic candidates running against Kean in the 7th district, Brian Varela; Varela said last month that he’s “going to fight with everything I have to keep ICE out of our district.”
If the Trump administration is indeed moving forward on a new detention facility without first notifying local elected officials, it wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened in New Jersey in the last year.
In February 2025, the New York Times reported on plans to use Joint Base Mcguire-Dix-Lakehurst in Burlington and Ocean Counties for detention and deportation purposes, but the base’s local congressmen said they hadn’t heard anything about it. Federal officials finally confirmed the existence of the plan in July, and have slowly divulged further details since then.
New Jersey’s two existing detention facilities, the Elizabeth Detention Center and the Delaney Hall facility in Newark, have not been without their share of controversy, either, but both are part of a longer history of immigration enforcement in the state: the Elizabeth facility has been operating continuously for years, while Delaney Hall was shut down in 2017 but reopened last May.
