Newark detention center under fire again for abuse and neglect claims
Why it matters:
Delaney Hall, a privately run immigration detention center in Newark, is drawing new outrage from advocates who say basic human needs are going unmet. Their claims echo complaints that led to unrest earlier this year.
Driving the news:
- Detainees report being served meals at random hours and sometimes going long stretches without food.
- Water still tastes metallic and undrinkable, and commissary shelves are bare.
- Hygiene items like toothpaste, shampoo and toilet paper have run out.
- GEO Group guards in riot gear were seen patrolling the perimeter last weekend, alarming advocates.
The big picture:
The reported deterioration highlights ongoing scrutiny of ICE’s partnership with private prison firms like GEO Group
Conditions inside Newark’s notorious immigration detention center have deteriorated again, The Jersey Vindicator has learned, with new reports of inhumane treatment surfacing four months after detainees rioted over similar conditions.
Immigrant advocates have long decried the sorry state of Delaney Hall, which they say includes food that’s unfit to eat, water that’s unfit to drink, and guards who goad detainees into fights and retaliate against whoever complains.
Kathy O’Leary of Pax Christi, an international Catholic peace organization, said advocates grew hopeful after the 1,000-bed facility on Doremus Avenue got a new assistant director, a retired warden from the Federal Bureau of Prisons named Sekou Ma’at.
“We have sort of a relationship with Ma’at. He was making noise about how he was going to do this and that,” O’Leary told The Vindicator.
But she said things never really got better at Delaney Hall, a hulking fortress that reopened in May after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials signed a 15-year contract with the GEO Group that the company estimates is valued at $1 billion with cost-of-living adjustments.
O’Leary and other advocates have received disturbing reports that GEO Group guards are again feeding detainees, many of whom were swept up in the Trump administration’s controversial immigration raids, at random and inconsistent times.
“The meals are getting further and further apart,” she said. “They’re serving people breakfast at 4 a.m., and then maybe they get lunch at 11 a.m. But sometimes it won’t come until 1 p.m., and then [dinner] is coming really late at night.”
When the food arrives, it’s not always edible.
One detainee told advocates he abandoned his lunch because it “smelled like it was spoiled and was unrecognizable to everybody.”
“No one ate it,” O’Leary said.
That’s worrisome, she said, because that sort of neglect is what sparked the violence back in June.
Some prison units have also run out of toilet paper, she said, and detainees have no toothpaste, toothbrushes, or shampoo.
And the jailed can’t even buy their necessities from the commissary because the commissary is also out of supplies.
The water still tastes metallic and somewhat “off,” she said, echoing complaints made throughout the year about horrid drinking water.
And the inmates have no long-sleeved shirts, even as the chilly New Jersey fall sets in.
“They were told they could order the shirts, but [the commissary] is out of those too,” she said.
The GEO Group did not directly respond to questions about the alleged mistreatment.
Instead, Christopher Ferreira, the company’s director of corporate relations, responded with the same lengthy emailed statement he has sent whenever The Jersey Vindicator inquires about Delaney Hall. The statement claims the GEO Group complies with ICE’s detention standards.
An ICE spokesperson did not respond to inquiries.
But O’Leary is worried things might get even worse.
Two weekends ago, advocates gathered outside Delaney’s chain-link fences as they usually do to protest ICE and support detainee families who line up outside on visiting days in the hope of getting to see their loved ones.
But this time, an unnerving sight greeted them: masked, handcuff-toting GEO Group guards wearing shirts that said “Delaney Hall CERT” as they walked the jail’s perimeter.
The letters stand for “Corrections Emergency Response Team,” or the jail equivalent of a SWAT team, O’Leary said.
The advocates tried to engage the guards, to no avail.
“We were like, ‘What are you doing? And, you know, what’s with the masks?’” O’Leary said. “They just wouldn’t talk to us.”
Their unnerving presence has made O’Leary fearful that Delaney Hall officials have moved past trying to fix the facility’s problems — and are instead preparing to bust up more riots.
“My concern is that … they’re not going to try and prevent an uprising from happening,” she said. “They’re just going to have these guys put it down violently.”
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Steve Janoski is a multi-award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Post, USA Today, the Associated Press, The Bergen Record and the Asbury Park Press. His reporting has exposed corruption, government malfeasance and police misconduct