ICE and protesters clash at Delaney Hall: What to know about the detention center’s ‘horrible’ conditions

Gabriela Soto’s husband Martin had been held at Delaney Hall for almost five months. She visited him there on May 19, days before he and other detainees launched a hunger and work strike inside the immigration detention facility in Newark, N.J. That internal defiance has been accompanied by a raucous protest outside Delaney Hall that by June 1 continued into a second week.

Ms. Soto has been protesting her husband’s detention alongside activists at the 1,000-bed facility for months. She spoke to America about the “horrible” conditions detainees at Delaney have been facing over the past year as the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign gathered steam.

She alleged that detainees are served meals contaminated with worms and mold. Detainees also complain of gas fumes and inadequate sanitation and medical care. Those conditions led to the protest inside the detention center that was accompanied outside by a vigil led by family members. By May 22 that demonstration had expanded into widespread protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement tactics and the administration’s mass deportation and detention policies.

Protesters have been met by violent pushback from ICE officers after attempts to block Department of Homeland Security agents from transferring detainees involved in the hunger and work strike. Demonstrators call for Delaney to be shut down. New Jersey’s Democratic governor, Mikie Sherrill, and the state’s two Democratic senators, Andy Kim and Cory Booker (who was able to gain access to the center), have joined those demands.

Journalists have not been allowed inside Delaney Hall to investigate claims of mistreatment and poor conditions. Gov. Sherrill said that state health inspectors were allowed only partial access during a site visit on May 28.

The only independent observers so far have been Democratic members of Congress conducting federally sanctioned oversight visits. Those members of Congress reported that what they have seen inside corroborates detainee claims. 

In an emailed statement to America, a spokesperson for D.H.S. denied any allegations of poor treatment or conditions at Delaney Hall. “Comprehensive medical care is provided from the moment [detainees] arrive and throughout the entirety of their stay,” the spokesperson said. The official also denied that a hunger strike even took place and said that state health inspectors were allowed into the facility where they inspected the food service department before departing.

“This is a detention center—we do not provide luxury accommodations,” the spokesperson said. “What we do provide are basic necessities like beds, clean water, comprehensive healthcare, and 3 meals a day until they go HOME.”

The spokesperson added: “RIOTERS WILL NOT SLOW US DOWN…. ANYONE who attempts to obstruct law enforcement or disrupt our operations will be prosecuted and face justice.” 

The ongoing confrontations outside Delaney Hall included an incident on May 25 when Mr. Kim was struck by pepper balls as he tried to intervene between protesters and ICE officers. D.H.S. officials deny that Mr. Kim was deliberately targeted.

On May 29, Ms. Sherrill deployed New Jersey state troopers to the protest site. She justified the move as an attempt to prevent more disorder and an “ICE surge” outside the center that would be a threat to public safety. Protesters now allege brutality and unprofessional conduct by those law enforcement officers as well. On May 31, protesters were arrested outside of the facility after violating a 9 p.m. curfew put in place by Newark Mayor Ras Baraka. 

A ‘radical hospitality zone’

Delaney Hall is managed by Geo Group, a private prison company that was awarded a $1 billion contract to run the facility for ICE for 15 years, part of a nationwide expansion of ICE’s detention capacity that began last year. 

While the facility has been the object of many complaints and protests by humanitarian groups over the last year, the company, along with D.H.S., has repeatedly denied claims of inadequate food and health care at the center.

Delaney Hall is located beside a sewage treatment plant and a garbage dump; residents have to contend with the aroma of sulfur and rotting garbage rising across the barbed wire and concrete landscape of Doremus Avenue.

In the 95-degree heat on May 19, days before protesters, media and police would descend on the site, a group of volunteers and activists were quietly at work creating an oasis in the industrial desert.

For months now a group of volunteers from Eyes on ICE, a grassroots coalition of individuals and organizations, have supported detainees as they have been released and the people who were arriving to visit those still held inside. Its “radical hospitality zone” sits under and around a tent erected on the side of the roadway leading up to the center.

Kathy O’Leary has spent much of the past year on Doremus Avenue. She is the coordinator of Pax Christi New Jersey and a member of the Eyes on ICE coalition. Wearing a T-shirt bearing the likeness of the peace activist Daniel Berrigan, S.J., she led a quick tour around the impromptu hospitality zone.

Inside the volunteer tent, diapers and toys are stocked for young families; protest signs and know-your-rights pamphlets line the walls. The volunteers stock shoelaces for detainees, who are often released without them.

“You’ll see a lot of people coming in sandals or shorts and not being allowed in, so we have the compliance clothes over here,” Ms. O’Leary said. “They can come and just throw on a pair of track pants over their shorts or throw a T-shirt over their tank top.” It is a small fix that allows them to get inside to visit a loved one.

“We’re here for the visitors,” she added. “This is our resistance, but our resistance is supporting their resistance.”

Ms. O’Leary pointed out multiple letters that have been written and signed by hundreds of detainees detailing conditions in Delaney Hall that Eyes on ICE have helped distribute. According to one letter, detainees are “being tortured physically and psychologically due to the poor food resources provided in these detention centers.”

Ms. O’Leary alleged that poor conditions have been an ongoing problem at Delaney. In addition to rotten food and inadequate sanitation, detainees endure erratic daily schedules, sometimes awakened for breakfast at 4 a.m., sometimes at 8 a.m.

Other mealtimes are similarly unpredictable. The lack of routine only adds to the anxiety detainees already face, she said.

‘It’s been horrible’

Ms. Soto was among the family members of detainees gathered around the hospitality tent on May 19. Originally from Peru, she is a U.S. citizen and has lived in the United States for over 20 years. She and her husband are currently expecting their third child.

Mr. Soto worked as a landscaper before he was arrested by ICE while out buying diapers. He was transferred to “disciplinary segregation,” or solitary confinement, in a detention center in Elizabeth, N.J., on May 25, a secretive move that further provoked the protests outside Delaney. The family lives in Kearny, N.J., just across the Passaic River from the Newark facility protesters seek to close down.

Ms. Soto described the visitation process at Delaney Hall, which includes long waiting times that can range from one to three hours. The visits are often “depressing,” she said, explaining that they are conducted in a room that looks like a high school cafeteria as guards closely supervise detainees’ interactions with family members. “It’s been horrible,” she said.

“When visiting time is over, the guards pull the kids away from their dads,” she said. “My daughter had an incident where she was saying goodbye. She was crying. She was saying that she misses her dad and everything, and the guard came in between.”

Holding her 1-year-old child with one hand, Ms. Soto said she had to drag her daughter out with the other hand after a guard forcibly separated her husband and daughter.

In the afternoon heat, a bell rang out and cheers greeted a man just released from detention. Carlos, who asked that his full name not be used, came to the United States from Nicaragua three years ago. He was living in New Jersey at the time of his detention. He had claimed asylum when he crossed the border. He told America, through translation provided by volunteers from Eyes on ICE, that he paid taxes and did not break any laws while living and working in the United States.

He was working as an Uber Eats driver when an unmarked ICE vehicle started tailing him at a stop at a gas station. He was pulled over and asked for his papers, which he did not have, and he was then taken into custody. After a month in detention, Carlos’s attorney secured his court-ordered release.

He described his time at Delaney Hall as “like torture.” The food was spoiled, he charged, adding that he was frequently awakened by guards in the middle of the night. It was impossible to keep clean, he said, explaining that scalding water temperatures made showering impossible. He said that he felt like a “hostage.”

But Carlos is ready to put the experience behind him and start again. “I believe in the laws of this country,” he said. He and the men locked up with him at Delaney Hall, he said, “are not criminals. We are all workers inside.”

“We don’t want to do bad things. We want to work hard and get ahead. I’ve never been arrested or restricted the way that I just was. It was hard,” he said.

“I believe in God, and that’s what keeps me going.”

‘We are still here’

Members of the Eyes on ICE coalition have maintained their witness at Delaney Hall as sometimes violent protests continue around them.

“People continue to be released so we are here for them, providing transportation as needed,” Ms. O’Leary explained in an email on May 29. 

“We are still here,” Ms. O’Leary said. “We are working on documenting what is happening to the people inside and getting that info out.”

She said that in addition to supporting people upon release amid the hectic environment outside of Delaney Hall, she was anticipating the restoration of visiting hours, concerned that new procedures “will significantly curtail our ability to visit people who we do not already have a close relationship with.”

In fact, a press release from Eyes on ICE on May 31 reported that “only 5 visits were completed” under the new policy, while multiple families were turned away. The new visitation window has been substantially shortened. The new procedure, requiring pre-approval of potential visitors, “is common in carceral facilities,” according to Eyes on ICE, “but it was not [previously] the procedure at Delaney Hall.”

• Facebook
• X
• Mail