Two Nights Outside ICE’s New Jersey Concentration Camp

NEWARK, N.J. — I went to Delaney Hall, a privately run ICE jail, for the second time on June 12, three weeks after 300-plus detainees initiated a hunger and labor strike. The strikers’ demands include an audience with Governor Mikie Sherrill, the release of vulnerable inmates, better living conditions, the end of pressure tactics to sign self-deportation orders, and progressive release and fair reviews of their immigration cases.

It was 95 degrees with 57 percent humidity when I arrived. The air around the jail smelled of sewage and animal fat rendering plants. They used to make Agent Orange here. Inside Delaney, behind barriers, fences, barbed wire, and enforced windows that bleach the silhouettes of prisoners to nuclear shadow, there is no air conditioning. At the time of writing, there was no visitation. GEO Group, the private prison company that received $1 billion in government contracts to operate Delaney, arbitrarily suspends visits. Detainees also report GEO feeding them rotten, infested food; denying them medical care; forcing them to work for pennies, if they’re paid at all. ICE and GEO also reportedly meet rebellion—including waving at protestors—with taunts, beatings, and pepper spray. It is functionally a concentration camp.

In the strike’s first week, hundreds rallied outside to amplify striker demands, show support for detainees, and attempt to obstruct transport convoys. Numbers dropped after an army of local and state police and illegally masked ICE agents beat, teargassed, and shot protesters with rubber bullets—but people are still on the ground. And detainees persist despite reported dispersals and life-threatening abuses. ICE has transferred many of the original strikers; exact numbers are hard to verify, since transports often leave at night and cases take days to update in the system. Advocates report 90 people transferred out the week of June 7, and up to 300 in the days prior. But on June 11, women detainees at Delaney issued a new set of demands, including to restore visitation, provide safe drinking water, and fire a GEO guard allegedly sexually assaulting them. There is no reason not to support them. There is no reason Delaney Hall should exist.