Essex County adds tent and toilets outside Delaney Hall as immigrant families keep waiting in the cold

After months of requests, Essex County has installed a tent and portable bathrooms outside Newark’s Delaney Hall, but immigration advocates say more must be done at the controversial detention center to shelter visiting family and friends from the elements.

Delaney Hall, a dreary fortress near the mouth of Newark Bay, has come under fire since it opened last May for the squalid conditions in which it houses detainees swept up in the Trump administration’s endless immigration raids.

But the plight of the hundreds of visitors who regularly flock to the parking lot and stand outside in the hopes of seeing incarcerated loved ones has drawn less attention, even though they have had no chairs, no bathrooms, and no refuge from rain, snow, or sleet.

The white tent and four portable toilets, installed last Tuesday, Jan. 13, about 100 feet from the federal facility, have at least provided visitors with the basics since Delaney has no indoor waiting area, immigrant advocates said.

“While we are not involved with Delaney Hall, I thought it was prudent to provide the tent and portable facilities so visitors could be treated with dignity and have some protection from the elements during the cold weather,” County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo Jr. said in a written statement.

But the setup could still use some tweaks, according to Kathy O’Leary of Pax Christi, an international Catholic peace organization.

“It’s definitely an improvement. But for the tent to be useful to the visitors — there’s no heat in it. And people are not going to stand inside because it’s too far [from the entrance] and they can’t hear what’s going on,” O’Leary told The Jersey Vindicator.

“The visitors are not going to trust it, and the guard who’s there most of the time already said there’s no way he’s going down to the tent to tell people that visiting hours for their unit are starting,” she said. “But they’re working on it, even though they’re still not where they need to be.”

That didn’t stop county commissioner Brenden Gill from crowing in a press release that the tent and toilets “show what is possible when people demand better from their government.”

“Our decision to install tent shelters and portable restrooms … will make a real difference for visitors and volunteers at Delaney Hall,” said Gill, who is running for Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s now-vacant seat in Congress. “People who spend hours supporting detained loved ones should not be forced to do so without basic accommodations.”

“For months, my commissioner colleagues and I urged the county to move forward with practical, immediate solutions,” he continued. “This progress reflects the power of sustained advocacy and community pressure, as well as the voices of families and community members who refused to be ignored.”

The county later put lights and bleachers inside the tent at advocates’ request — a welcome addition since weekday visiting hours often stretch late into the winter night, O’Leary said.

The feds reopened Delaney Hall after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials signed a 15-year, $1 billion contract with the private prison firm GEO Group to run it.

Since then, it’s attracted all sorts of bad press as detainees have regularly complained of water that’s unfit to drink, food that’s unfit to eat, erratic meal times, and poor prescription medicine distribution, among many other issues.

The detainees, most of whom have no criminal records, rioted barely a month after the facility’s opening to protest the awful living conditions.

Things haven’t been much better on the outside.

Advocates have told The Jersey Vindicator that guards regularly dismiss concerns about visitor safety, play favorites, and sometimes outright intimidate guests.

That drew the attention of the state’s elected officials, with a half-dozen members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation slamming the Trump administration’s inhumane treatment of visitors in a September letter to the feds.

“No one should have to risk their safety simply to see their loved one,” the Democratic representatives wrote.

On any given day, as many as 300 people crowd into the tiny lot at the detention center throughout the day and wait for the guards to call out which visitors can be let in.

Despite the county’s nominal improvements, the facility still doesn’t have any ADA-compliant wheelchair ramps, parking or seating areas, which the group said violates state and federal laws.

There’s also no on-site parking, which forces visitors to pull to the side of Doremus Avenue and pray their cars don’t get ticketed or hit by one of the big trucks pulling in and out of the many industrial parks lining the road.

O’Leary said this is a massive problem.

“We need somewhere to park that’s safe,” she said. “The parking and the exposure are our two biggest issues.”

If she had her choice, the neighboring Essex County Correctional Facility would open its normally half-empty lot to the detainees’ visitors, and the GEO Group would shuffle things around inside so families could wait in the building instead of outside.

“Clearly, it’s not a priority for them to fix it. I don’t know how much pressure the county and state are exerting on them to actually do something,” O’Leary said of the GEO Group and ICE.

“We’re happy to have these things, and that somebody’s listening to us. It’s all good stuff,” she said of the recent improvements. “But you would think they would be concerned about the safety. It’s horrifying that this is what they do. They shouldn’t be creating conditions that are dangerous and dehumanizing.”

Neither ICE nor GEO Group responded to several requests for comment.