New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill was allowed to inspect the Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark on Monday morning, but not allowed to talk to any detainees, the governor’s office said in a statement.
“What I received was a closely controlled and limited tour of the facility,” Sherrill said in the statement released after the visit, which came after the governor was previously denied access to the facility. “That is unacceptable.”
Not being able to speak to the detainees “continues to raise serious questions about the real conditions of the facility and the treatment of those held there,” Sherrill added, saying that she will continue to fight for the closure of the facility.
A spokesperson for the GEO Group, the private Florida-based company contracted to run Delaney Hall, deferred comment about Sherrill’s visit to ICE.
Sherrill’s hour-long visit began just before 8 a.m. and included a tour of the law library, medical unit, kitchen, cafeteria, visitation area and a male housing unit — specifically Units 2A and 2B — according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson Christine Cuttita.
The Delaney Hall ICE detention center, where detainees have mounted a labor and hunger strike in recent weeks in protest of the conditions, has emerged as a flashpoint in the national debate over immigration enforcement and treatment of detainees. Detainees allege rotten food, limited access to healthcare and legal assistance, unsanitary facilities and transfers as retaliation for participating in the strikes — all of which ICE and GEO Group deny.
Federal, state and local law enforcement officers have also arrested dozens of protesters outside the facilities in recent weeks.
The Department of Homeland Security claims it's detaining the "worst of the worst," but a Gothamist analysis of the agency's own internal data found that the vast majority of detainees at Delaney Hall have no criminal history.
Sherrill’s visit comes shortly after the state of New Jersey filed a lawsuit against the GEO Group to complete a health inspection of Delaney Hall, after state health inspectors say they were denied access to visit parts of the facility.
In other legal action, a federal judge last week denied an emergency motion to release detainee Martin Soto from ICE custody. The Peruvian immigrant was previously detained at Delaney Hall, and later transferred to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in what his lawyers called retaliation for his role in the hunger and labor strike at Delaney Hall.
Soto’s wife has been a vocal critic of ICE and the conditions her husband has faced inside Delaney Hall. Soto’s transfer was the catalyst for days of intense protests outside the facility.
Michael Sol Warren contributed reporting.
