County Fight Contested

Newark NJ — City vs. GEO Group/ICE Over Delaney Hall Permits and Conditions

Essex, NJ FIPS 34013

Current status: Facility opened May 1, 2025 despite city lawsuit. Mayor Baraka arrested May 9 2025. Detainee death Dec 2025. May 2026: ~300-detainee hunger/labor strike; Sen. Andy Kim pepper-sprayed; Gov. Sherrill denied entry; strike leader transferred to Elizabeth. June 2026: strike continues 11+ days; NJ AG + Gov. sue GEO over blocked health inspection (June 2, Essex Cty Superior Ct); Newark expands its suit to seek closure; Baraka imposes then lifts half-mile curfew, 61 arrested; HRW backs strikers. Conditions fight ongoing.

The Fight

The City of Newark has waged an aggressive legal and political fight against the reopening of Delaney Hall, a 1,000-bed GEO Group ICE detention facility that opened May 1, 2025 as the largest ICE detention center on the East Coast.

Timeline of Confrontation

February 27, 2025: ICE announces 15-year, ~$60M/year contract with GEO Group for Delaney Hall
April 1, 2025: Newark files suit in Essex County Superior Court alleging GEO renovated the facility without proper city permits and barred city inspectors
April 10, 2025: GEO Group moves case to federal court, claims Newark lawsuit aims to “cripple” immigration enforcement; argues sovereign immunity shields them since ICE contract governs
May 1, 2025: Delaney Hall opens despite pending lawsuit — no certificate of occupancy from Newark
May 6, 2025: GEO Group denies city fire inspectors entry; fire code violation issued
May 9, 2025: Newark Mayor Ras Baraka arrested at Delaney Hall during oversight visit with 3 members of Congress (Reps. Watson Coleman, McIver, Menendez Jr.). Charged with trespassing.
June 12, 2025: 4 detainees escape through a sheetrock wall after days of complaints about conditions and lack of food. Small riot inside facility.
June 2025: Rep. LaMonica McIver indicted on 3 counts of assaulting federal officials (she called it “political intimidation”)
October 2025: Continued reports of abuse, neglect, inedible food, undrinkable water, guards goading detainees into fights
December 11-12, 2025: Jean Wilson Brutus, 41, dies within 24 hours of entering ICE custody at Delaney Hall — first detainee death at the facility. His death was one of 32 ICE custody deaths in 2025, the highest since 2004.
December 2025: Families waiting in freezing cold for hours to visit detained relatives over holidays
January 2026: Civil rights attorneys launch independent investigation into Brutus death
March 31, 2026: Rep. McIver appeals to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, arguing charges should be dismissed on legislative immunity and vindictive prosecution grounds; lower court denied her motions to dismiss in November 2025
April 6, 2026: ACLU-NJ, National Women’s Law Center, and NAACP Legal Defense Fund file amicus brief in Third Circuit backing McIver; characterize prosecution as separation-of-powers violation targeting Black congresswoman for legislative oversight
April 6, 2026: Advocates and pastors hold vigil outside Delaney Hall for detained NJ pastor Yeison Cortes Vasquez (Colombian national, no criminal record, overstayed tourist visa since 2016)
April 11, 2026: Pastor Cortes Vasquez released on bond with GPS monitor; facility conditions reported: 800 detainees, only 7 full-time medical staff — over 100:1 ratio; respiratory illness spreading in crowded cells
May 22, 2026: ~300 detainees launch a hunger and labor strike over spoiled/maggot-infested food, Tylenol as only medication, cells holding 12-16, filthy bathrooms, and pressure to self-deport. Detainees call families to describe conditions until guards cut phone/tablet access.
May 24-25, 2026: Solidarity protests escalate; ~1 a.m. Monday ICE blocks the back-gate road and clears protesters with pepper balls, mace, batons, shoving people against cars. ICE says it “dispersed approximately 70 agitators.” ICE transfers strike leader Martin Soto Hernandez (Peruvian, detained since February) to the Elizabeth Contract Detention Facility, placing him in isolation and denying phone calls per his attorneys.
May 25, 2026: Gov. Mikie Sherrill denied entry on her first visit (DHS says she lacks federal oversight authority); Rep. Rob Menendez waits 12+ hours for an oversight visit. Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) is pepper-sprayed by federal agents while trying to defuse the crowd. Members of Congress later access Soto at Elizabeth.
May 26-27, 2026: DHS Sec. Markwayne Mullin denies a strike is happening, calls elected-official visits a “political stunt,” says detainees refusing food over “ethnic right food” can “go back to their country,” and says Kim deserved to be sprayed. Sen. Kim demands changes at the facility.
May 28, 2026: NJ Dept. of Health gets only a limited inspection of Delaney Hall — inspectors barred from the medical unit, sleeping areas, and bathing/toileting areas. GEO says ICE must authorize broader access; ICE declines.
May 29, 2026: DHS issues a “Correct the Record” release calling the state’s claims “smears,” citing an August 2025 DHS OPR inspection (17 of 22 standards met; 5 deficiencies) and the May 28 kitchen check.
June 1, 2026: Strike continues past day 10. Strikers’ demands now explicitly include release of medically vulnerable/elderly/pregnant/young detainees, immigration-judge case review, federal habeas-petition review, a meeting with the governor, and an end to voluntary-departure pressure — linking the strike to the unresolved Third Circuit bond question (see bond-hearing-circuit-split-2026).
June 2, 2026: NJ AG Jennifer Davenport and Gov. Mikie Sherrill sue GEO Group in Essex County Superior Court, seeking an expedited injunction for full DOH inspection access. Mayor Baraka announces Newark will expand its existing (April 2025) suit to seek the facility’s closure if inspectors are not granted full access. After protests turned violent (fires, clashes), Baraka imposes a 9 p.m.–6 a.m. curfew within a half-mile of Delaney Hall.
June 2-3, 2026: 61 protesters arrested (failure to disperse, curfew violations, resisting arrest); DHS alleges protesters bit officers. Baraka shifts policing from NJ State Police back to Newark PD, calling prior tactics “aggressive, unnecessary, and in some cases unconstitutional.”
June 3, 2026: Baraka lifts the curfew after an arrest-free protest. Human Rights Watch publishes findings corroborating strikers’ allegations and citing a 1,373% increase in voluntary departures in NY/NJ immigration courts (July–Oct 2025 vs. prior year). DHS calls the NJ lawsuit “frivolous.”

Conditions at Delaney Hall

Detainees and advocates have documented:

Meals served at random hours; long stretches without food
Metallic-tasting, undrinkable water
Spoiled food
Problems with prescription drug distribution
Erratic visiting schedule; visitors forced to wait 1+ hours outdoors
Hostile, retaliatory guards
Overcrowding (900+ detainees on a given day)

Why This Fight Matters

The Newark/Delaney Hall fight is the most dramatic confrontation in the NJ detention battleground. A sitting mayor arrested for trying to oversee conditions at a facility in his own city. A private prison company opening without city permits and barring fire inspectors. A detainee death within months of opening. Four escapes through a sheetrock wall.

Delaney Hall illustrates the complete breakdown of local oversight when federal sovereign immunity is invoked to shield private contractors. GEO Group’s legal position — that the city cannot inspect or regulate the facility because it operates under a federal contract — represents a new frontier in the privatization of immigration enforcement.

Senator Cory Booker introduced the Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act following a tour of Delaney Hall, which would end for-profit detention and increase federal oversight.

The June 2026 phase opens a new legal front: rather than the 2025 permits/zoning theory, the state and city are now invoking the NJ Department of Health’s statutory authority to inspect any public or private detention facility. Two suits now run in parallel — the state’s (June 2, Essex County Superior Court) for inspection access, and Newark’s expanding suit for closure. GEO’s defense (ICE must authorize any inspection) and DHS’s “frivolous” framing test whether a state can compel health inspection of a federally contracted private ICE facility — a sanctuary-state oversight question distinct from, but parallel to, the Roxbury NEPA fight and the NJ sanctuary legislation. The strikers’ pivot to bond/habeas demands ties the conditions fight to the live Third Circuit bond-eligibility appeal (argued May 11, 2026; undecided).

Sources

This research is published at The RAMM — investigative reporting on the detention pipeline.

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