Locked-up immigrants at Delaney Hall, the Newark detention center, say they were living in the U.S. with federal oversight — even obtaining Social Security numbers and jobs — before they were grabbed “without justification.”
In a four-page handwritten letter, the author, Leonardo Villalba, says he and 24 fellow detainees had left their homelands because their lives and those of their families were in danger. They apologized for coming here as they did.
“Upon entering, we surrendered ourselves to border authorities who processed us,” Villalba wrote. “Some of us were given parole or a court date to continue our cases in accordance with the due process afforded to us by the Constitution and laws of the United States.”
The undated letter, written in Spanish on white loose-leaf, is being distributed by Cosecha, a national advocacy group for undocumented immigrants, which provided an English translation. Titled “Our cry: A letter from inside Delaney Hall,” the letter says thousands of detainees have the same story. The two dozen men who added their names at the bottom of the letter “will corroborate what has been stated,” Villalba wrote. He since has been transferred, according to Cosecha.
Once in the U.S., Villalba wrote, the men maintained contact with federal officials.
“We also attended periodic check-ins,” he wrote, “obtained work permits and Social Security numbers, filed taxes and were working legally and contributing to the economy. Therefore, we did not pose a threat to the country or the communities where we resided.”
Plane tickets back
Some have requested to leave the country voluntarily “as the only option to return to their countries of origin, despite the danger we may face, if we are exposed.” In court sessions, “the judges inform the detainees that they can buy plane tickets to return to their country, but ICE officers refuse this possibility, telling us not to buy those tickets.”
Though no judges’ orders exist for their arrests or detentions, the men were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at their regular check-ins, Villalba wrote. They were “kidnapped or detained without justification” and their “right to due process and legal counsel was violated.”
Advocates and detainees say Delaney Hall is crowded and unsanitary, and that ICE is holding people with physical disabilities and mental health issues as well as juveniles and the elderly.
GEO Group, which runs Delaney Hall, says it “strongly disagrees with these allegations, which we believe are instigated by politically motivated outside groups as part of a campaign to abolish ICE.”
ICE did not respond to NJ Spotlight News’ request for comment.
