A detention facility in Newark, New Jersey used to hold migrants was the site of an uprising from detainees on Thursday. According to NJ Advance Media, roughly fifty people being held in the facility banded together to force down an exterior wall, apparently in protest against the quality of food and the long periods that inmates were made to go without a meal. “It’s about the food, and some of the detainees were getting aggressive and it turned violent,” said Mustafa Cetin, a lawyer who spoke to the outlet representing one of the detainees held at the facility. “Based on what he told me it was an outer wall, not very strong, and they were able to push it down.”
Cetin’s client told him the inmates who broke the wall were on the third floor of the facility and dangled down bedsheets, in what appears to have been an escape attempt. There is no official word from ICE on the event as of this writing, although New York Post reports that at least four of the detainees are “unaccounted for.” Local sheriff’s deputies who responded to calls about a disturbance found that “the situation had already been resolved,” according to Essex County Sheriff Amir D. Jones, who then explained that officers did not enter the facility, but only stood on the perimeter.
While Delaney Hall is within the sheriff’s jurisdiction of Essex County, the facility is run by Geo Group, a corporate prison company that has a $1 billion 15-year lease, which would generate over $60 million in revenue every year. The deal between Geo Group and the federal government to take over the facility for this purpose was struck with the Biden administration in spring 2024.
Delaney Hall was the sight of another chaotic scene in May, shortly after the facility reopened, when Newark Mayor Ras Baraka attempted to inspect the facility and was arrested by federal officers. Baraka was charged with trespassing, which was subsequently dropped. Baraka reiterated his concerns n the wake of this event. “We are concerned about reports of what has transpired at Delaney Hall this evening, ranging from withholding food and poor treatment, to uprising and escaped detainees,” he said in a statement. “This entire situation lacks sufficient oversight of every basic detail — including local zoning laws and fundamental constitutional rights.”
Newark congresswoman Lamonica McIver, who was there with Baraka to carry out her constitutionally-mandated duty of oversight over the federal facility, was also charged for having allegedly “assaulted, impeded, and interfered with law enforcement.” After a grand jury indicted her earlier this week, McIver called the charges “a brazen attempt at political intimidation.”
