More than 300 detainees at a Newark, N.J., immigration detention are continuing a hunger strike launched Memorial Day weekend to protest insufficient and spoiled food, lack of sanitation and bond denials, Human Rights Watch reported June 3.
Federal officials, meanwhile, have issued conflicting statements ranging from outright denials of the strike to warning detainees will be force fed if the protest continues at the site operated by GEO Group, a private, for-profit prison company.
“FACT CHECK: there is NO HUNGER Strike at Delaney Hall. There are no subprime conditions,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a May 26 social media post.
But border czar Tom Homan effectively confirmed the situation during a Fox News interview the same day DHS posted its denial: “Hunger strikes never work. We’re not going to change what we do because someone goes on a hunger strike and, matter of fact, if it gets bad enough and the prisoners feel like they’re putting themselves in extreme danger, medical danger, then we’ll force feed them.”
In fact, Homan added, the administration will get a court order to force feed the detainees. “So, they can put themselves in position where they’re not eating, but it’s not going to cause them to be released.”
Yet during a Cabinet meeting the following day, new DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said it was “only a handful of individuals … refusing to eat,” and even then only because they wanted “ethnic right food,” ABC News reported.
But like the hunger strike itself, the spoiled food, unsanitary conditions, medical neglect and other abuses that sparked it are appallingly real and actually worsening, according a Human Rights Watch report.
“As the strike continues, detained people have reported that officers have retaliated by beating, pepper spraying or transferring them to other facilities. Outside the facility, ICE and local law enforcement have clashed with, and used force against, protesters who have gathered in support of the hunger and labor strike.”
Many believe the recent 1,373% increase in voluntary deportations from New York and New Jersey detention centers is due to the deteriorating conditions, the international watchdog group explained.
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka being taken into custody by federal agents at Delaney Hall, an immigrant jail in Newark, on May 9. (Photo courtesy of Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman)
“The strikers detained in Delaney Hall are calling for DHS to ‘release medically vulnerable, elderly, pregnant and young detainees.’ They are also asking to meet with the New Jersey governor, for immigration judges to meaningfully review their cases, for federal courts to review their habeas petitions, and for DHS to end pressuring detained people to sign voluntary departure agreements or deportation documents,” the group reported.
The New Jersey Monitor recently interviewed detainees at Delaney Hall through their loved ones’ cell phones and tablets before guards ended that access.
“We deal with racism, with bad conditions, with guards that do not help us. It gets worse all the time, and they don’t treat us like people.”
One inmate confirmed the hunger strike is continuing: “We deal with racism, with bad conditions, with guards that do not help us. It gets worse all the time, and they don’t treat us like people.”
Another said the protest will continue as long as necessary. “We don’t know the consequences exactly, maybe solitary confinement, we won’t know. But they are taking our freedom of speech, and our physical health is in danger.”
Detainees reported finding live worms in their food and having to endure rooms without air conditioning. “They said the goal of the strike is to release innocent detainees and bring attention to immigration judges who they say are ignoring their cases. The participants of the strike range from detainees who have been there for a few weeks to nearly a year. They maintain they have not committed violent crimes.”
The Monitor also found protesters outside the facility to be equally committed to protesting the conditions inside Delaney Hall.
“This is punishment and retaliation because of the ongoing organizing going on inside,” one activist said. “They told their family members they will continue to strike until their voices are heard. I do envision it could get worse if there is more pushback from individuals inside.”
But Delaney Hall isn’t the only Immigrations and Customs Enforcement detention center to face allegations of abuse. Far from it.
“Investigations by Human Rights Watch over the years have shown health care at several immigration detention facilities to be inadequate, sometimes contributing to preventable deaths. The federal government’s gutting of oversight bodies has made it harder to check abuses, and the 2026 mortality rate in ICE detention is on track to be the highest in 20 years.”
Abuses at a detention center in El Paso, Texas, led Human Rights Watch, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Texas Civil Rights Project and the law firm Farella Braun and Martel to file a lawsuit against ICE May 29.
The action was filed due to excessive use of solitary confinement, medical neglect, disease outbreaks, inadequate and rancid food and unsanitary living conditions at Camp East Montana, a facility located on Fort Bliss military base. The litigation said the conditions violate detainees’ Fifth Amendment right to due process.
Kyle Virgien
“The conditions here in this ICE tent camp in a desert are inhumane and cruel. No human being should ever have to go through this,” plaintiff Gerald Akari Angye said. “I have already experienced torture in my home country of Cameroon and I never thought I would experience such severely violent treatment by guards here in the United States of America. I have been beaten here and even today, I still have a brace on my hands and wrist.”
The El Paso detention camp “is nothing short of a civil rights catastrophe,” said Kyle Virgien, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Prison Project.
“Since the day it opened, the facility has repeatedly made headlines for horrific rights violations and even the deaths of three detained people, yet ICE has still evaded accountability for its conduct. We’re suing to ensure that no other human being has to endure the inhumane treatment that the Trump administration has inflicted on our clients.”