The ACLU of New Jersey today responded to the signing of a new contract for GEO Group, Inc. to open Delaney Hall in Newark as a detention facility for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The contract is valued at $1 billion to provide 1,000 beds over a 15-year period, multiplying detention capacity in New Jersey four times over. Prior FOIA litigation by the ACLU revealed the contract sought “comprehensive detention services for adult male and female noncitizens” to “provide for general population, intake, segregated housing, and medical beds at a contractor-owned/contractor-operated detention facility or facilities.” This would be one of the first ICE facilities to open during President Trump’s second term.
“The planned opening of Delaney Hall as a private immigration detention facility presents a serious threat to New Jersey’s immigrant communities and is one of the largest immigration detention contracts our state has ever seen. This massive increase in detention capacity places the public in further danger of the Trump administration’s unconstitutional, racist, and xenophobic mass detention and deportation agenda. With rapidly increasing federal immigration enforcement in New Jersey, this announcement is a further attack on our state and only adds to the rising fear felt by people who call our state home. This is a critical moment that demands action from state and local leaders,” said ACLU-NJ Executive Director Amol Sinha.
For New Jersey to live up to its values of being fair and welcoming for all, it must not be complicit in the Trump administration’s extreme mass detention and deportation agenda. State lawmakers have the authority to take action to better safeguard residents. The ACLU-NJ and our partners are calling on lawmakers to immediately pass the Immigrant Trust Act to limit state and local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration authorities when doing so is voluntary under federal law.
