Opinion: Military bases are no place for immigrant detention

In August 2021, as Kabul fell and the U.S. government scrambled to respond, we were helping lead two of the largest civilian efforts to evacuate Afghan allies. One of us led a coalition of veterans and human rights advocates called Evacuate Our Allies. The other founded AfghanEvac, a volunteer-led network representing every part of the American experience coordinating evacuations, resettlement, and legal support. Together, we helped tens of thousands of Afghans — interpreters, teachers, aid workers — escape the Taliban and reach safety in the United States.

We built an improvised system under pressure. We worked with the White House, the Pentagon, and networks of regular Americans to accomplish an unimaginable task. And when we needed a place for evacuees to land, we collaborated with the government to use U.S. military bases, Fort Lee, Camp Atterbury and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst as safe havens. They were temporary stopovers and an imperfect solution to an unprecedented problem. They were staging grounds for a promise kept and became an initial welcome to this country.

Now, that system is being used in reverse.

The Trump administration is expanding civilian immigration detention onto those same military installations, often using them as the last stop in this country before deportation. Fort Bliss is being converted into a 5,000-bed detention facility. Camp Atterbury and McGuire-Dix are being activated for detention. The military is being pulled into immigration enforcement, and in the process, American troops from units that saved our Afghan allies are now being tasked with detaining refugees.

The bases we once used to welcome our allies are now being refitted to hold and remove them and others seeking safety and protection.

Earlier this month, a federal court allowed the administration to end Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for more than 11,000 Afghans. Many of them fled the Taliban after the U.S. withdrawal. Some were processed through the very bases now being militarized for detention. They entered through gates of welcome and may now be forced to exit through gates of removal.

We know this system because we helped build it. And we know how easily tools built for rescue can be turned into mechanisms of punishment.

The argument being made by the administration is that this is about capacity and control. But using military infrastructure to detain civilians, many of whom came here through legal pathways like asylum, humanitarian parole, and other refugee statuses, erodes the boundary between national defense and domestic enforcement. It repurposes credibility earned through service into cover for a system of deportation.

We’ve seen what happens when real immigration solutions are discarded in favor of political theater. In 2021, the government relied on temporary fixes — humanitarian parole, TPS, and promises that the system would catch up. But it didn’t. Protections have been stripped away, and the asylum system remains overwhelmed. The same lawmakers who once expressed outrage over the Afghanistan withdrawal are now silent as those evacuees — and many others — are funneled into a militarized detention system. The failure to legislate isn’t just leaving people behind. It’s turning the military into the last tool in a broken immigration process.

Military bases should never be used for detention. Not for Afghans. Not for anyone. When troops are tasked with policing civilians, when bases are turned into detention camps, we cross a line that democratic societies are supposed to hold sacred. The military exists to protect the nation, not to enforce immigration policy. That’s the work of courts and civilian law enforcement. When those officials fail, the answer is not militarization, but accountability.

This should concern every American, because once it becomes normal to detain civilians on military bases, to blur the line between civil and military authority, to put uniforms in the service of domestic political purposes — it is very hard to go back.

Congress must act. It should restore protections for vulnerable populations, but more importantly, it must find the courage to stand up to an administration that is politicizing the military in ways that undermine our democratic foundations. Detaining civilians on military bases is a line we should never cross. Lawful immigration systems must be civilian-led, transparent, and accountable — not driven by domestic deployments and the false legitimacy of a uniform.

We’ve seen what this country is capable of when it chooses compassion over fear, the rule of law over the barrel of a gun and accountability over expedience. That choice is in front of us again. If we believe in the rule of law, in the separation of military and civilian power, in the basic dignity of the people who turn to us for refuge — then we cannot look away. We built a system to save lives. We will not stay silent as it’s used to erase them.

Purdy is CEO of The Chamberlain Network and lives in Atlanta. VanDiver is the president of AfghanEvac, a Navy veteran and a longtime civic leader in San Diego. He lives in Clairemont.