Nearly 300 detainees sign new SOS letter from inside Newark ICE facility

Immigrants held at Delaney Hall allege neglect, worsening conditions, and violations of due process

Nearly 300 immigrant detainees at Newark’s Delaney Hall have signed an open letter detailing their legal struggles and accusing the government of neglect that they say amounts to physical and psychological torture.

In the letter, released this week after being smuggled out of the controversial Doremus Avenue detention center, the detainees urged politicians, foundations, and immigrant activist groups to come to help them.

“We see with deep helplessness and frustration that our due process, rights, and defense have been violated, disregarding benefits granted under the 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments of the United States Constitution,” the detainees wrote. “We feel vulnerable and, in a way, kidnapped, detained without justification, not to mention that we are being tortured physically and psychologically due to the poor food resources provided in these detention centers.”

“Our American Dream is the safety and protection of our families. We are in a difficult situation, and we trust in God and believe that justice will be done under the law of the United States of America, since it is a sovereign and constitutional country respected worldwide for upholding human rights,” they wrote.

The letter, titled “S.O.S.,” is the second message of its kind to be smuggled out of Delaney Hall, a 1,000-bed immigration detention center where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holds undocumented immigrants awaiting trial and deportation.

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The camp opened in May 2025 after ICE signed a 15-year, $1 billion contract with private prison firm GEO Group to run it.

But the squalid conditions quickly attracted the wrong kind of attention, and detainees have relentlessly complained about poor water, worse food, erratic meal times, and spotty prescription medicine distribution, among many other issues.

Most detainees have no criminal record. Detainees rioted barely a month after Delaney’s opening to protest what they said was inhumane treatment.

The detainees’ first letter, released in February and dubbed “El Grito de Nosotros,” was signed by about two dozen people and detailed many of these complaints.

The second letter drew more than 12 times as many signatories, a sign that detainees are uniting across different cell blocks, immigration activists said.

“I was really impressed by the fact that they were able to organize across units,” Kathy O’Leary of Pax Christi, an international Catholic peace organization, told The Jersey Vindicator. “But seeing them say the same thing [as the first letter] with a little more desperation … it was really disheartening.”

“You get one letter from a concentration camp, you’d think [people] would do more. It’s just really sad the letter didn’t get more attention from the general public and legislators. As the months drag on and there’s still no movement, that’s really hard,” O’Leary said.

The two letters began in a similar fashion, with their authors apologizing for the way in which they crossed into the country but claiming they had little choice because their homes were so dangerous.

But once here, the detainees said they followed the law as best they could. They turned themselves in to the authorities, who processed them and usually granted them a future court date.

In the meantime, they met check-in requirements, obtained work permits, filed taxes, and worked legally while contributing to the economy, according to the letter.

“We know that ICE agents have orders to arrest immigrants,” the detainees wrote. “But in our cases, we had already been processed, we were complying with legal requirements, and there was no order from a judge for our detention or arrest, since from our entry we received a procedural benefit.”

Others had lived in the country for a decade or more before ICE seized them. During that time, they’d started families, paid their taxes, and kept their records clean, according to the letter.

The detainees also claimed that attorneys fear representing them, judges quickly dismiss their cases and appeals, and prosecutors seek to send them to unstable countries that are just as perilous as the ones from which they fled.

On some days, immigration judges race through dockets with more than 40 hearings, making quick determinations that defendants should be deported regardless of due process, the detainees claimed.

Other times, the judges cancel hearings and leave detainees waiting months for a new court date.

“We are certain that we are not being processed equally under immigration laws and the Constitution,” the detainees wrote. “We live with anguish and fear of appearing in court.”

Conditions inside the facility are equally bleak, with guards failing to ensure immigrants receive necessary health care as illnesses such as COVID and the flu run rampant, according to the detainees.

ICE agents have also swept up disabled and vulnerable people, including the deaf, mute, and blind, as well as the elderly, minors, and pregnant women, the letter added.

“Families are being destroyed and separated,” the inmates wrote.

The federal Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said in an emailed statement that the Trump administration is simply enforcing the country’s immigration laws by “arresting illegal aliens who have no right to be in our country.”

“No lawbreakers in the history of human civilization have been treated better than illegal aliens in the United States,” a department spokesperson claimed.

The statement also said detainees get “comprehensive medical care from the second ICE takes them into custody.”

“This is the best health care many aliens have received in their entire lives,” officials said in the statement. “Ensuring the safety, security, and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority at ICE.”

GEO Group, the firm that runs Delaney’s day-to-day operations, issued nearly the same statement it always does when confronted with any claim of wrongdoing.

“GEO strongly disagrees with these allegations, which are part of a long-standing, politically motivated, and radical campaign to attack ICE’s contractors, abolish ICE, and end federal immigration detention by proxy,” Christophe. Ferreira, GEO Group’s director of corporate relations, wrote in the statement. “We are proud of the role our company has played for 40 years to support the law enforcement mission of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”