The private prison, Delaney Hall, in Newark, New Jersey, was opened on May 1 by a company called Geo Group, which won the $1 billion contract award by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to use the facility as a detention center for undocumented migrants. With 1,000 beds, this is the largest ICE facility on the East Coast. Geo Group also controls many of the privatized aircraft known as ICE Air which operates out of Newark’s Liberty International Airport. Several civic groups, such as New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice have been organizing protests and other actions to sound the alarm that Newark is becoming the largest East Coast ICE outsourcing center where detained migrants will go to Geo Group’s detention facility, and then be shipped out by Geo Group’s private contractor aircraft, from Newark airport. New Jersey also has the 300-bed Elizabeth Detention Center, another privatized ICE prison run by a company, CoreCivic.
There has been widespread legal and political opposition to these privatized detention facilities in the state. New Jersey has put legal limitations on for-profit migrant detention centers. In 2021 the Garden State passed state law AB5207 which prohibits private contracts with ICE for detention centers. In 2023 CoreCivic took the state to court over the issue and former President Joe Biden gave support to CoreCivic by saying the state law would be “catastrophic” to federal immigration efforts. In the years since then, immigrant rights activists in New Jersey have been fighting to get the decision reversed. The state has appealed the ruling.
There have been high-profile protests to stop the Delany Hall prison which included the arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka on May 9. Protesters often focus on these privatized prisons and their history of abuse, medical negligence, and mistreatment. The federal government pays $20 million per year to CoreCivic for its Elizabeth Detention Center. New Jersey’s immigrant population is second only to California, with roughly one in four residents having been born outside of the United States.
