Meanwhile, plans to use a South Jersey military base as a holding site for undocumented immigrants is moving forward.

As we've reported this week, the Trump administration approved using Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst as a detention center with the capacity to house up to 3,000 detainees.

But few other details have been released.

Well, Democratic Congress members Herb Conaway and Donald Norcross today dropped in on the base to find out for themselves.

Senior political correspondent David Cruz was there.

Policy announcements from the federal administration can sometimes seem like they're written in disappearing ink.

So an idea to house or incarcerate, depending on your point of view, thousands of undocumented immigrants on the Joint Base is subject to change.

And for the two Democrats who visited the base today, that was an important takeaway.

The base does not have any plans on where this may or may not be located.

That will, if it comes, will come from DHS, the requirements that they will need.

And that's part of the concern, say the lawmakers.

Congressman Conaway says ICE, which is in the Department of Homeland Security, has had a less than stellar track record of running detention facilities, something they almost always hire private companies to do.

See Delaney Hall in Newark, operated by the GEO Group.

Conaway says the visit today confirmed to him that nobody seems to know what's next.

Quite frankly and in fairness to the commanders on the base, they are as much in the dark as we are about what may happen.

We're confident that the commanders at Joint Base MDL will conduct their mission as they're ordered and they will do that dutifully and responsibly.

I have to say, I am much less sanguine about DHS and ICE conducting their mission and their taskings responsibly and according to our constitutional principles.

The 40,000 acre base whose main mission is refueling and other tactical support missions around the world has expanded in the past, harboring over 14,000 Afghan refugees in 2021.

Food, lodging, and even English language classes were provided, but that was a Department of Defense operation noted Norcross, who sits on the House Armed Services Committee.

It's just another example of what it's been like trying to deal with the federal government.

I have never in my 11 years of being in Congress have been shut out by our own government trying to get the information on what might or might not happen on a base that happens to be in our backyard.

The idea that our own country is shutting down transparency on what they do and our core issue as members of Congress is that oversight and that's not happening.

An appeals court ruled this week that New Jersey could not block private prison operators from running immigrant detention centers in New Jersey, clearing the way for corporations like Geo Group to make a beeline for the base, something they told their shareholders they were expecting to do this year.

So while there may not be a lot of details, there's plenty of anticipation in some quarters that the joint base will soon be open for the detention business.

I'm David Cruz, NJ Spotlight News.