Congress is poised to provide more than $70 billion in fresh funding to drive the Trump administration’s hardline anti-immigration crackdown and mass deportation agenda months before the midterm federal elections.
Once the president signs that bill into law, the money will flow to the Department of Homeland Security, then nationwide to a web of immigration detention sites that include Delaney Hall in Newark. Tensions there between protestors and immigration agents exploded over the Memorial Day holiday weekend amid a hunger and labor strike.
In the melee on Monday, guards pepper-sprayed U.S. Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) and pushed back protestors who had watched the facility all weekend. Kim and Democratic Reps. Rob Memendez (D-8th), Nellie Pou (D-9th), LaMonica McIver (D-10th) and Analilia Mejía (D-11th) visited Delaney at various times during the national holiday.
“I saw chaos inside and outside of the ICE detention center Delaney Hall today,” Kim said in a statement Monday. “Detainees protesting the lack of due process, the disgusting food and poor treatment while their families and advocates stood outside calling for help.”
“Instead of engaging with me and others about the poor conditions, ICE sent in an armored vehicle and a line of armed agents that only poured gasoline on the fire,” Kim added. “Civilians were tackled and restrained, and agents fired pepper balls and spray into the crowd.”
Citing ongoing permitting issues with the Delaney complex, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka on Tuesday called for the state Attorney General’s Office to investigate the site.
ICE representatives did not respond to written questions from NJ Spotlight News about the weekend’s events.
Worms in food
An estimated 300 detainees at Delaney entered their fourth day of a hunger strike on Tuesday in protest of poor health care and food. The building holds 900 people on average, according to data from TRAC, a nonpartisan research group that analyzes federal records,
“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,” Delaney detainees wrote in an open letter.
The letter was posted on a website called La Huelga — Spanish for “the strike.”
Worms have been found in food served inside, Nedia Morsy, executive director of immigration advocacy group Make the Road New Jersey, said in an interview. To protest the conditions, detainees bang with their hands on outside-facing windows at night, Morsy said.
Nationwide, resistance is growing to conditions at ICE centers, many of which are run by private firms, said Haddy Gassama, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union.
“The hunger strike at Delaney Hall is not an isolated action,” Gassama said. “Against this brutal backdrop, the rates of death in detention have been steadily rising, at an average of 1 death in ICE custody every six days.”
Credit: (Elise Young/NJ Spotlight News)Outside Delaney Hall on Tuesday, Paul Sylvester, 63, a college professor from Philadelphia, held a sign in honor of his father, Francis Sylvester, who he said served in the Navy during World War II.
“My father really believed in the United States of America — democracy, rule of law, human rights,” Sylvester said in an interview. “If my father were here today, he wouldn’t recognize his Republican Party.”
Heckling congressman
Members of Congress for months have said the Delaney conditions are poor. Unlike the governor, they have statutory authority to conduct in-person inspections of such sites.
During his visit to Delaney Hall on Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Rob Menendez was speaking to a reporter on the sidewalk when a heckler, waving an American flag, interrupted.
“How’s your father?” called the man, referring to Robert Menendez, a former U.S. senator serving an 11-year sentence after his bribery conviction. Menendez ignored the man until he shouted, “You helped kill Dayanara Cortes!”
Eleven-year-old Dayanara and her mother, Maria Pletiez, were killed in Lakewood last year in a crash involving an alleged drunken driver who had immigrated to the U.S. without authorization.
Menendez turned around and walked toward the man, asking, “Do you believe pregnant women should be in there right now?” The man responded: “Yes. They just have to sign a paper and they go home. They’re not allowed to be here.”
Menendez turned to walk away, then fired back, “You should believe in due process!” The man said, “Citizens don’t get as much process as illegals!” Menendez walked away as demonstrators jeered at the heckler, who declined to give his name.
Later in the afternoon, about 250 feet north of Delaney, demonstrators gathered on the sidewalk outside what they called the “radical hospitality tent,” where families could gather before and after visiting people under detention. By 2 p.m., they had erupted into whistles and hoots three times, marking the release of individuals from custody.
Near one of the hall’s driveways, about six to 10 protestors moved orange plastic barriers out of the way so vehicles could enter and leave a gated parking lot. Others tidied the area, collecting and bagging street litter, and passed word when donated refreshments arrived.
A Spanish-speaking man released at 2:45 p.m. declined to give his name to reporters outside.
The Delaney population more than tripled in detainees last year.
Republican lawmakers are expected to pass the bill to increase funding for President Trump’s massive deportation effot — legislation Democrats cannot block on their own with a Senate filibuster — in party-line votes in June without Democratic support.
“What’s coming next is going to supercharge deportation,” Eric Schmitt, a Republican senator from Missouri, said this spring.
‘Business wins’
The private-prison company that runs Delaney, GEO Group, donated to Trump’s inauguration in January 2025.
In separate transactions, GEO donated $1 million in March and $1 million in April to MAGA Inc., a super PAC linked to Trump, according to federal campaign finance records. The new acting director of ICE, David Venturella, is a former executive of GEO Group.
During a shareholders conference call on April 28, George Zoley, CEO of GEO Group, said 2025, which coincided with the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, was the “most successful period for business wins in our company’s history.”
Last year, GEO opened Delaney Hall and four other detention sites, Zoley said. The company reported $2.6 billion in revenue and profit of $254 million for the year.
“We expect this year to be active as well,” Zoley said of 2026, adding that the company has about 6,000 vacant detention beds that could be filled. Business in GEO’s air deportation and ground transportation divisions continues to “steadily increase,” Zoley said.
A plane operated by Global X, a private company that contracts with ICE and is known as ICE Air, took off Tuesday at 12:54 p.m. from Buffalo, N.Y., and landed at Newark Liberty International Airport at 1:45 p.m., flight records show.
The same plane took off a few hours later — 4:01 p.m. — for Alexandria, La., an ICE deportation hub.
