Camp Atterbury Joins the ICE Map as Indiana Jails Fill

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Congress on July 15, 2025 that Camp Atterbury could be used for temporary immigrant detention. The Indiana National Guard camp sits about 40 miles south of Indianapolis, on more than 34,000 acres licensed to the state Guard.

His letter paired Edinburgh with Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey. Indiana then opened working ICE beds in a state prison, while the training camp stayed on a list with no published daily count.

Hegseth’s Letter Put a Training Base on the ICE List

The letter, sent to members of Congress, named both posts for temporary use by Homeland Security “to house illegal aliens.” Hegseth wrote that holding people there would not hurt training, operations, readiness, or National Guard and Reserve requirements.

will not negatively affect military training, operations, readiness, or other military requirements, including National Guard and Reserve readiness.

Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense, July 15, 2025 letter to Congress

Federal officials had cited crowding in Immigration and Customs Enforcement lockups as the reason they wanted military space. Camp Atterbury is federally owned and run by the Indiana National Guard, which can support up to two brigade-sized units at once.

Rep. André Carson, a Democrat from Indianapolis, had already asked Homeland Security in June 2025 for answers about the base. He said the idea raised questions about legal rights, humane treatment, and national security. He later said he had learned the camp was preparing to house 1,000 people.

Chris Daley, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, called the plan poorly conceived and warned about dignity and safety for neighbors held there.

The Guard did not immediately comment when the letter became public. The July notice also did not say when anyone would arrive, or how a training post would be staffed as a lockup.

The 1,000 Beds That Opened in a State Prison

Three weeks after Hegseth’s letter, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced a separate Indiana deal. The state would expand detention bed space by 1,000 beds at Miami Correctional Facility, a 3,200-bed state prison near Peru, about 100 miles southeast of Chicago. That slice is about a third of the prison.

Noem branded the partnership the Speedway Slammer, a nod to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Racing officials bristled at the name. The administration still used it.

If you are in America illegally, you could find yourself in Indiana’s Speedway Slammer.

Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security, Aug. 5, 2025 statement

Gov. Mike Braun said Indiana was proud to work with President Donald Trump and Noem “as they remove the worst of the worst with this innovative partnership.” He said the state would keep leading among states on illegal immigration.

Rep. Rudy Yakym, a Republican whose district includes the prison region, backed the move and pointed to the One Big Beautiful Bill, which funded 80,000 additional ICE beds nationwide. State Senate Democratic Leader Shelli Yoder said branding a prison the Speedway Slammer might make headlines, but detaining people without due process, including legal residents and even U.S. citizens, is not law and order.

Carson said ICE was detaining legal, law-abiding immigrants and that the rhetoric made communities less safe.

Report after report confirms that ICE is detaining legal, law-abiding immigrants. It is illegal, unjust, and does nothing to make us safer – these families do not pose a threat to our community.

This administration’s rhetoric is inflaming hate – which actually makes our… https://t.co/uCmABiQhsF

— André Carson (@RepAndreCarson) August 6, 2025

The Indiana Department of Correction later prepared a $15.8 million request for the planned immigration site. By late December 2025, after the first news-media tour of the prison, Miami Correctional was holding about 550 immigrant detainees. Camp Atterbury was still described as available for 1,000 people, with the mechanics of detention there unreleased.

INDIANA ICE BED MAP

The letter that made national news was about a Guard camp. The people counted in Indiana were in a state prison. The first giant military tent camp rose in Texas. A later Indiana idea was a warehouse on the Indianapolis list.

Why Chicago Removals Pointed at Edinburgh

Camp Atterbury was assigned to support removal operations out of the Chicago area. The New Jersey base was paired with Newark. That geography is why a southern-Indiana training post showed up in a Midwest deportation build-out.

In January 2025, Braun signed an order telling Indiana agencies to work with ICE. The Department of Correction, State Police, National Guard, and state Homeland Security reached agreements. Troopers were to help chase immigration cases, not only hold people after a federal arrest.

On Sept. 7, 2025, demonstrators stood outside Rep. Jefferson Shreve’s Greenwood office to protest ICE’s use of Camp Atterbury. Organizers said housing for Hoosiers should come first. It was still unknown that week whether anyone in ICE custody had been moved onto the post, or whether a schedule existed.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The letter: Hegseth listed Camp Atterbury for temporary DHS housing on July 15, 2025, and said readiness would not suffer.
• The 1,000-person figure: Carson said the camp was preparing to house 1,000 people; later briefings called the post available for that many.
• The working jail: Miami Correctional held about 550 immigrant detainees in late December 2025 under the Speedway Slammer partnership.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• A daily count: No later public letter has published how many ICE detainees, if any, sleep at Camp Atterbury on a given night.
• A start date: Officials never released a public arrival timetable for the Edinburgh post.
• On-site rules: How Guard training, contractor staff, and ICE custody would share the same acres has not been spelled out in public.

That gap is not a small footnote. A 34,000-acre training camp can absorb tents, or it can sit on a list while a prison in Peru does the holding. Without a head count, the Hegseth letter is a permission slip, not a population report.

Fifteen Thousand Prisoners Once Lived Behind the Wire

The same installation has been a holding ground before, under different law and different names. From April 30, 1943, to June 26, 1946, a 45-acre compound on the western edge sat behind double barbed wire and guard towers as a prisoner-of-war camp.

It received an estimated 15,000 Italian and German soldiers under the 1929 Geneva Convention. Seventeen prisoners died. There were no escapes. The internment camp closed in June 1946 and was torn down.

In 2021 the mission flipped from enemy prisoners to invited evacuees. After the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Camp Atterbury joined Operation Allies Welcome. The first 1,000 people arrived on Sept. 1, 2021.

CAMP ATTERBURY HOLDING HISTORY

1. April 30, 1943: A 45-acre prisoner-of-war compound opens on the western edge of the camp.
2. June 26, 1946: The internment camp closes after holding an estimated 15,000 Italian and German soldiers.
3. September 1, 2021: The first 1,000 Afghan evacuees arrive for Operation Allies Welcome.
4. May 2025: Federal officials float the camp as a possible ICE holding site; they decline to confirm it.
5. June 2025: Carson writes Homeland Security demanding answers on detention at the base.
6. July 15, 2025: Hegseth’s letter lists Camp Atterbury for temporary DHS housing.
7. August 5, 2025: Noem announces 1,000 ICE beds at Miami Correctional Facility.
8. December 2025: The prison holds about 550 immigrant detainees; Atterbury remains listed as available for 1,000.

During Allies Welcome the base housed more than 7,000 Afghan evacuees in 82 lodging buildings across six neighborhoods, with dining halls and medical centers. Family groups got dorm-style rooms. Single adults got open-bay barracks. The buildings had heat, air conditioning, and plumbing. Ukrainian refugees later used the same kind of plant.

That is the physical fact behind the 2025 letter. The Guard already knows how to bed thousands on those acres. What changed is the legal box. Evacuees were guests of a resettlement operation. ICE detainees are held for court or removal. The ACLU’s Daley drew that line when he said mass detention always brings rights abuses for the people inside.

After Fort Bliss, the Military Camp Model Had a Record

The same summer Hegseth named Atterbury, the Army let a task order for a soft-sided detention camp on Fort Bliss in El Paso. ICE called it Camp East Montana. Steel-framed tent structures opened in August 2025. Contract oversight moved from the Army to ICE at the start of fiscal 2026.

As of April 1, 2026, it was ICE’s largest detention site, with capacity for about 5,000 people. A Government Accountability Office report issued June 9, 2026, found the camp did not meet key detention standards, risking the safety of detained noncitizens and staff.

WHAT THE FORT BLISS AUDIT FOUND

• Unused meals: ICE paid about $7.1 million for meals it did not need from Oct. 1, 2025, through March 12, 2026.
• Empty capacity: All five housing units, each built for 1,000 people, stayed open even when the camp held about 1,600 at the end of February 2026.
• Standards gap: The watchdog said the site failed key detention rules that are supposed to govern custody, health, and security.
• National load: ICE’s average daily population rose from 39,314 on Jan. 20, 2025, to 67,204 on April 1, 2026, a 71 percent increase.

Hegseth’s readiness pledge was about training calendars at Atterbury and Fort Dix. The Fort Bliss file is about what happens after a military post is asked to become a city of tents for ICE. It is a different base, in a different state, built on the same bet that surplus military land can swallow a custody crisis.

Critics of the July letter already talked about internment with better branding, and about warehousing people in camo tents under a logistics label. Fort Bliss gave that objection a ledger: paid meals for people who were not there, and full units running at a fraction of the advertised 5,000.

An ICE planning document put the wider Detention Reengineering Initiative at $38.3 billion, with a goal of holding 100,000 immigrants at a time. Soft-sided camps were the first surge tool. Warehouses were the next.

An 8,500-Bed Warehouse on the Indianapolis List

By February 2026, ICE’s warehouse map included an Indianapolis site estimated at 8,500 beds. City officials opposed it. A separate Merrillville property of about 275,000 square feet also drew a town resolution against detention use. The owner, Opus Holding, said that February it was not negotiating with DHS.

Internal papers described a new detention model by September 30, 2026: eight large sites of 7,000 to 10,000 people, 16 processing centers of 1,000 to 1,500 people for stays of three to seven days, and 10 turnkey sites where Enforcement and Removal Operations already worked. ICE moved to buy around 20 warehouses to convert.

On March 31, 2026, ICE paused further warehouse purchases after Markwayne Mullin became Homeland Security secretary. On Sept. 10, 2026, court filings showed the government dropping conversions in Georgia and Utah, including a Social Circle, Georgia, warehouse bought for $128 million and planned for up to 10,000 people, and a Salt Lake City warehouse bought for $145.4 million.

Indiana thus sat on three layers at once. A Guard camp on a Pentagon letter. A state prison that actually held hundreds. A proposed Indianapolis warehouse that matched the 8,500-bed class used in Georgia and Texas. Only one of those layers produced a public head count in 2025, and it was the prison.

Immigrants Welcome, Read the Columbus Church Sign

In August 2025, pastors near Columbus pointed to a sign outside First Presbyterian Church that said “immigrants welcome.” They said it sat in contrast to an ICE site proposed at Camp Atterbury, and they talked about offering spiritual services if detainees did arrive.

That local argument never needed a nationwide theory. Edinburgh and Columbus live with the Guard post as a neighbor, a payroll, and a runway for helicopters. A detention mission changes who comes through the gate, how long they stay, and which agency writes the rules inside the fence.

This kind of mass detention always results in significant rights abuses for the people being detained.

Chris Daley, executive director, ACLU of Indiana

Daley said the ACLU of Indiana was concerned about the dignity and safety of hundreds of hard-working neighbors likely to be held at Camp Atterbury if the plan went forward as described. Braun and Noem described the same beds as a way to take criminal offenders off the street. Both claims can be printed. Only a roster of who is actually in the bunks can test them.

Camp Atterbury has the buildings that slept more than 7,000 evacuees and the acreage that once held 15,000 prisoners of war. Hegseth put that plant on ICE’s temporary list. Indiana’s counted ICE population showed up first at Miami Correctional, under a racetrack nickname, while the training camp’s nightly number stayed unpublished.