ICE is exploring expanding New Jersey immigrant detention facilities, potentially adding 600 beds

ICE is exploring proposals to expand its capacity to detain immigrants in New Jersey, potentially adding 600 beds in at least two facilities, according to information provided through a lawsuit filed by the ACLU.

The news comes as the incoming Trump administration pledges to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, an operation that experts say would require a vast increase in the nation's detention infrastructure.

This expansion proposal, however, began under President Joe Biden.

The ACLU said it obtained the records from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed in September. The documents show the facilities under consideration include the Elizabeth Detention Center in Elizabeth, and the Albert M. "Bo" Robinson Center in Trenton.

The Elizabeth center, near the Newark airport, holds up to 300 immigrant detainees, many of them asylum-seekers, according to NorthJersey.com. The 1,000-bed Trenton center held state-sentenced prisoners until 2022, the New Jersey Monitor reported.

The New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice said the plans raise concerns the state "may become ground zero for the incoming Trump administration's mass deportation and detention agenda across the Northeast, affecting nearby communities in New York City and Philadelphia."

Efforts to reach ICE officials for comment were not immediately successful.

The documents provided by ICE offer a limited glimpse of the detention proposals, the ACLU said, as the records seem to include only the environmental-impact statements submitted by CoreCivic Inc. and GEO Group, both big private-prison owners and operators.

The center in Elizabeth is New Jersey's only operating detention facility.

Amy Torres, executive director of the justice alliance, called on Biden to use his remaining time in office to halt all detention expansion.

"Without any action, this will be his legacy," she said. "He not only turned over the keys, he built the infrastructure for them."

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operates or contracts with more than 190 detention facilities across the country. Three are in Pennsylvania: The 1,876-bed Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Clearfield County, the Clinton County Correctional Facility, and the Pike County Correctional Facility.

The Berks County detention center closed last year after years of lawsuits and protests.

New Jersey is home to about 440,000 undocumented migrants, with another 153,000 in Pennsylvania, according to the Migration Policy Institute in Washington. About 47,000 live in Philadelphia. All could face deportation.

The ACLU sought records connected to a federal contract solicitation for additional ICE detention space near Newark. The solicitation, issued in June of this year, sought "comprehensive detention services" for undocumented men and women.

It is unclear from the documents whether additional New Jersey facilities responded to ICE's solicitation, the ACLU said.

ACLU-NJ campaign strategist Ami Kachalia called on the Biden administration to immediately halt any expansion, noting that New Jersey officials have taken steps to phase out ICE contracts.

"We may be looking at 600 beds right now, but given that the Trump administration has been quite explicit ... we anticipate we could see a large-scale expansion of detention in New Jersey," Kachalia said.

The New Jersey legislature banned immigrant-detention centers in the state in 2021, a law that was later ruled unconstitutional. Litigation around that law continues.

"The Biden administration is simply paving the way for the incoming Trump administration to conduct mass detention and deportation," Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney at the ACLU's National Prison Project, said in a statement. "The Biden administration must instead work to close these facilities now."