The center in Newark, just miles from Manhattan, is close to an international airport and is expected to have space for as many as 1,000 migrants.
The center in Newark, just miles from Manhattan, is close to an international airport and is expected to have space for as many as 1,000 migrants.
The center in Newark, just miles from Manhattan, is close to an international airport and is expected to have space for as many as 1,000 migrants.
The Trump administration announced plans this week to reopen an immigration detention facility in Newark, just a short drive from New York City, greatly expanding its capacity to hold detained immigrants in the Northeast as federal authorities seek to ramp up arrests and deportations.
Known as Delaney Hall, the 1,000-bed, privately operated facility will be the first new detention center to open during President Trump’s second term, according to Caleb Vitello, the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who was recently reassigned. ICE did not provide a date for the opening.
The center will dwarf the only other detention site in New Jersey, a facility in Elizabeth that has about 200 beds. The new center’s location — near major airports and on the outskirts of immigrant-rich New York City — could play a pivotal role in the agency’s ability to increase the number of detainees it can hold and to quickly stage deportation flights.
“The location near an international airport streamlines logistics and helps facilitate the timely processing of individuals in our custody as we pursue President Trump’s mandate to arrest, detain and remove illegal aliens from our communities,” Mr. Vitello said in a statement late Wednesday.
One of the major obstacles facing Mr. Trump as he aims to deport millions of undocumented immigrants is securing enough detention beds to hold the people federal agents are arresting. The administration has already turned to military bases, including Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, and is developing plans to detain undocumented immigrants at military sites across the country, including in New York and New Jersey.
The plan to reopen the Newark detention center was the first concrete indication that the Trump administration intends to also rely on more traditional facilities to expand its detention capacity. ICE has been running low on beds in recent weeks as it holds about 40,000 people in jails and centers nationwide, a number that federal officials want to significantly increase.