Calls for the closure of a notorious private immigration jail in Newark, New Jersey are growing by the day after 300 ICE detainees launched a hunger and labor strike over the Memorial Day holiday and issued a letter that drew attention to their miserable plight inside the facility that's owned by the GEO, a major Trump donor.
For months, detainees, their families and advocates have said GEO was serving up inedible food and was failing to provide essential medical care despite the fact GEO has a billion dollar contract with the federal government. Detainees are paid $1 a day if they help maintain the facility while GEO CEO George Zoley gets $11.2 million in annual compensation.
Many of the detainees are without any legal counsel or fallen prey to fly by night immigration attorneys. Advocates say that others have secured court orders for their release but remain incarcerated. Some have actually signed voluntary self-deportation papers but have languished for months while GEO profits from their incarceration
Over the subsequent six days since the strike started, activists and the detainee families reported that visiting hours had been canceled and that tensions were quickly rising inside and outside the 1,000 bed site in Newark's industrial Ironbound section. Families of the detainees and their supporters are worried about reprisals on those inmates who signed on to what is now a series of letters that are an indictment of a system operating totally outside the law and any kind of semblance of due process.
On Thursday, U.S. Senator Andy Kim sounded the alarm that his office was being swamped by calls alleging the detainees were now being pepper sprayed and roughed up inside GEO Group's Delaney Hall.
"If true, these actions must stop immediately....ICE and GEO have a responsibility to keep detainees safe: they've instead refused to let State health officials conduct full inspections and have repeatedly stood in the way of Congressional oversight," Kim wrote. "The people inside Delaney Hall deserve their day in court and to be treated humanely, not violently. The time is now to shut this broken facility down."
“Right now there are ICE agents inside of Delaney Hall violently beating the hunger strikers,” Nedia Morsy, the director of Make the Road New Jersey told WHYY. “Someone will be killed if no one intervenes and shuts this down. These masked agents are acting as if they’re above the law. This is a modern-day concentration camp, and history will not forgive silence at this moment. We need to shut down Delaney Hall and free everyone inside.”
On Democracy Now this morning Rep. Analilia Mejia, who has been inside the facility, confirmed that four detainees had been hospitalized after guards used pepper spray and physical force inside Delaney Hall.
Since the start of the detainees strike, the Department of Homeland Security has denied there's an ongoing hunger strike. As for the latest reports of the use of force inside Delaney, DHS contends staff
"used the minimum amount of force to safely deescalate the situation. Following the incident, all affected detainees were promptly evaluated by on-site medical personnel and were cleared with no serious injuries.”
President Trump at an impromptu White House press conference said the Delaney Hall protestors were "fake" and paid. Department of Homeland Security Secretary MarkAnthony Mullins threatened, on the eve of the World Cup, to curtail international flights by ending international flights at Newark Liberty International Airport.
"We're currently drawing up plans to say, "Listen, in these sanctuary cities where the radical left Democrats aren't allowing us to do our job and enforce federal laws, then we shouldn't be processing flights into their cities either," Mullin said.
Earlier in the week, Kim, who had led a fact finding tour inside the for-profit prison, had himself been pepper sprayed when he attempted to de-escalate tensions between the protestors and the federal immigration officers.
Over the holiday weekend Gabriela Soto, 28, whose husband Martin was abducted by ICE back in. February, told WBAI she and her two children were ALL American citizens but that didn't matter to immigration officials.
"My husband was out getting diapers and he was just taken because of a language barrier," Soto told listeners. According to Soto, who is expecting her third child, the fact that her husband was married to an American citizen and had two children who were citizens was of no consequence. "The judge didn't think that was good enough to release him and that's what is wrong with the system. People have legal rights and they are being taken away."
Martin Soto was ultimately transferred to another private prison in nearby Elizabeth, New Jersey.
For months, early on in Trump 2.0 a handful of committed social justice activists kept a vigil at the sprawling facility that reported an in-custody death back in December. Last year, months before the murders of Renne Good and Alex Peretti, Newark and Delaney Hall were the flashpoint for a local community based push back against Trump's mass deportation strategy.
Back on May 9, 2025, masked federal immigration officers seized Mayor Ras Baraka off of a public street outside Delaney Hall. Several hundred city residents, social justice activists, and dozens of Newark police officers encircled the DHS site where Baraka was being held. He was released in a few hours.
Charges against Baraka were ultimately dropped, but charges were brought against Rep. LaMonica McIver, who along with Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ), and Rep. Robert Menendez Jr. (D-NJ), tried to shield Baraka from the federal agents.
McIver faces 17 years in jail if convicted on the charges.
GEO is currently fighting the City of Newark over the municipality's right to require a certificate of occupancy and regular fire department inspections of the massive congregant care site. GEO has no firefighting capability and in the event of a fire it would be up to Newark to respond.
This week scores of protestors assembled outside Delaney Hall and witnessed visits from elected officials like New Jersey Gov. Mickie Sherrill, who was turned away.
"I’m deeply disturbed by reports of the poor conditions at Delaney Hall. Unsafe, inhumane, and unconstitutional living conditions are completely unacceptable," Sherrill said in a statement. "I have long opposed private detention facilities and advocated against them. I will continue to call for the closure of Delaney Hall because of reports like these."
Several members of Congress, led by U.S. Senator Kim (D-NJ) spent time inside the facility and with the family members of the detainees who were outside looking for updates on their loved ones.
ICE reported a half-dozen arrests outside the facility after masked agents used force against protestors who they said were blockading the entrances to the facility
Back in December, 41 year-old Jean Wilson Brutus, who was originally from Haiti, died the first day he was in custody. In the press release confirming his death, federal officials denigrated him as a "criminal illegal alien" something his family vehemently denies asserting he had gone through a rigorous four month vetting process in order to enter the U.S., according to reporting in the New Jersey Monitor.
The Trump regime has regularly and systematically mischaracterized the individuals they have abducted off the streets or from the DOJ's immigration courts as criminals despite multiple well sourced reports that over 70 percent have no criminal record.
Earlier this month, Minnesota prosecutors charged an ICE agent for a January shooting of a Venezuelan immigrant in the leg and then lying about the basic facts in the case which at the time DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said was "a defensive shot to defend" the officer's life.
Last week, a federal judge threw out the federal criminal case brought against Kilmar Brego Garcia that the Trump administration had originally sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador. Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw cited in his ruling Garcia's assertions the Trump DOJ had brought the case as a "vindictive and selective prosecution in violation of the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause."
So far, this year 18 detainees have died in ICE or private custody across the country. Last year, 32 people died in ICE custody, the most since 2004. Others have been shot or killed and died in the process of running away.
At the start of Trump 2.0, there were roughly 40,000 people in ICE custody. In just one year, that number was a record 73,000 at the start of this year.
As of this writing, the striking detainees appear to be holding their resolve and we all need to hope that they continue to do so for the sake of America's soul. Trump is relitigating the Civil War, hoping to recreate a nation sorted out by color.
Believe your eyes.
When you saw the Confederate flag in the US Capitol Rotunda on January 6th we had turned a corner back in time. With Trump's mass pardon of the violent insurrectionists we sunk deeper into the hateful darkness of America's racist and genocidal past that's animating TODAY'S immigration policy.
"Many hearings are canceled, leaving detainees waiting months for a court date," wrote the detainees in their first letter demanding justice. "In the same way, prosecutors file motions to send individuals to Latin American countries such as Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, and even Uganda in Africa--countries with equal or worse conditions of violence."
With just weeks to go before the 250th anniversary of the signing of our Declaration of Independence, we owe a great debt to the 300 detainees who are putting so much at risk to show us just how much trouble this nation is in.