Delaney Hall, a private immigration detention facility in Newark operated by the for-profit contractor Geo Group, has become the flashpoint of a widening clash between detained immigrants and federal authorities determined to restrict outside scrutiny of conditions inside.
Those held at the facility face food contaminated with maggots, overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, and what detainees describe as beatings and pepper spray use. The Geo Group acknowledged at least one "physical altercation" involving "limited use of chemical agents." Medical care is inadequate. Prisoners work for roughly $1 per day despite having been convicted of no crime.
For weeks, detainees have staged a coordinated hunger strike and work stoppage. Nearly 300 people inside the camp, including 50 women, have signed letters documenting their conditions and smuggling accounts out to journalists and activists. The strikes have drawn sustained protests outside the facility, where anti-ICE demonstrators, including New Jersey Senator Andy Kim, have faced off against pro-Trump supporters. Both sides report pepper spray deployment, though the Department of Homeland Security has denied using it against protesters.
Federal authorities have moved aggressively to contain the uprising and block public awareness. Congress members have been denied facility access in apparent violation of law. This week, DHS also "denied full access" to New Jersey state health inspectors. The agency has a documented history of making it difficult for detainees to contact lawyers or family, charging high fees for phone calls and repeatedly transferring prisoners between camps to obscure their whereabouts.
When a small congressional delegation finally gained entry, they reported seeing inadequate food and medical care, as well as teenage girls held in the facility. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries described what he witnessed as "a depraved indifference to human life." The delegation was barred from meeting with hunger strike leaders. DHS has dismissed reports of poor conditions as "a hoax."
The extent of the secrecy suggests federal authorities recognize a credibility problem. Detainees at other immigration centers have resorted to creative desperation: in San Diego, immigrants taped messages describing horrific conditions to lotion bottles and threw them over fences to reach protesters. At other detention centers, prisoners have formed their bodies into "SOS" letters when allowed outdoor time, hoping overhead drones would capture the signal.
What distinguishes the Delaney Hall resistance is that those organizing it are not evading capture or counting on sympathetic citizens to shield them. They have already been detained. They appear to have moved past the calculation that resistance carries too high a cost. Instead, they are openly defying ICE from inside the system itself, creating what organizers describe as blocks of solidarity from within what they call the Trump administration's "archipelago of concentration camps."
The stakes are escalating. Tom Homan, Trump's border czar, has suggested that if the hunger strike continues, ICE guards may resort to force-feeding. ICE has already violated court orders by secretly transferring one strike leader to a different detention center in an apparent effort to fracture the organized resistance.
The detainees' options have narrowed to almost nothing. They cannot flee. They cannot hide. They cannot rely solely on outside advocates. Their only leverage is the willingness to refuse food and labor, to endure suffering in the hope that sustained pressure from the outside world forces change. Federal authorities appear equally determined to ensure that world never sees what is happening inside.
Author James Rodriguez: "The real test isn't whether these strikes can change policy from inside a locked facility, it's whether the people outside will finally demand what these imprisoned immigrants are risking everything to reveal."
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