New Jersey’s congressional Democrats and Roxbury residents are decrying Trump administration plans to turn a warehouse in this Morris County town into the state’s third immigration detention center.
The lawmakers called it “unconscionable” that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security would consider building another migrant jail in New Jersey, even after an uprising and a detainee’s death at Delaney Hall, the Newark facility that opened last year. They urged Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons to “immediately cease” any plans for a jail in Roxbury.
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“Immigration detention facilities in New Jersey have become notorious for inefficiency and waste in addition to humanitarian failure. These failures have inflicted trauma both on detained individuals and on surrounding families, communities and local governments who have been forced to grapple with the ongoing harms associated with immigrant detention,” they wrote in the three-page letter.
According to the Washington Post, internal ICE documents show the Trump administration is seeking contractors to turn industrial warehouses into jails to hold thousands of immigrant detainees. Roxbury is among two dozen locations across the country where officials are mulling warehouse jails.
“The proposal would subject thousands of people, the majority of whom pose no threat to public safety, to confinement under cruel and inhumane conditions. Warehouses are designed for storage and shipping, not for safely housing people,” the lawmakers’ letter reads.
They stressed that ICE detention facilities “already have a poor track record.” Thirty-two people died in ICE custody last year, making it one of the deadliest years in the agency’s history, according to groups like the American Civil Liberties Union that track in-custody deaths.
The Democrats noted in their letter that prior to Delaney Hall’s opening, they warned of the dangers of expanding immigrant detention and urged officials to reverse those plans. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement entered into a 15-year contract with prison company Geo Group to operate the 1,000-bed facility anyway, and the facility opened last spring.
Since then, Delaney Hall has been at the center of numerous controversies. Newark city officials alleged Geo Group opened it without securing the proper permits, prompting a lawsuit. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka (D) was arrested there May 9 — he was charged with trespassing, and prosecutors quickly dismissed the case — and Rep. LaMonica McIver (D) was charged with assault in connection with the melee that occurred when agents moved to detain Baraka. In June, four detainees escaped after knocking down a shoddy wall, and in December, a detainee died less than a day after arriving at the jail.
The letter from Democrats comes on the heels of Roxbury’s all-GOP council unanimously passing an ordinance that says the town is “not an appropriate municipality” for a detainee processing facility. The ordinance says township officials have not been approached or solicited by the federal government about opening the facility there.
Currently, New Jersey is home to two detention centers, Delaney Hall and Elizabeth Detention Center. A state law bars local, state, and county governments from entering into contracts with federal immigration authorities for housing migrant detainees, though private companies may still do so.
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