NEWARK, New Jersey (WABC) — ICE announced it will be reopening an immigration detention facility in Newark this spring.
Delaney Hall, which previously housed immigrants from 2011 and 2017, will be the first facility to open under President Donald Trump’s administration.
The private, for-profit detention facility is getting a contract from the federal government to reopen as a federal immigration processing and detention center.
The facility is the largest in the region, housing over 1,000 beds.
Acting ICE Director Caleb Vitello said in a statement that the facility’s size and proximity to a major airport will help it pursue the President’s mandate to “remove illegal aliens from our communities.”
“This makes it one of the largest detention facilities along the entire East Coast,” said Amy Torres with the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice.
Just a few weeks ago in Newark an ICE raid rattled members of the large immigrant population.
“ICE raided a large-scale market and on the spot they quarantined and detained a US citizen and a veteran and questioned the validity of their status,” Torres said.
Immigrant advocates and elected leaders in Newark are sounding the alarm, not just about the message the administration is sending this city, but about the company running the facility.
“This 15-year, $1 billion contract, announced the very same day that GEO Group released its fourth-quarter earnings, is not about making New Jerseyans safer or fixing our broken immigration system. Instead, it demonstrates this administration’s driving motive to enrich its favored corporations while wasting taxpayer dollars,” Senator Cory Booker said.
“GEO group was also the first corporation to max out their donations to the Trump campaign in the last election cycle. They’re hugely incentivized to pursue private immigration centers and private prisons across the country,” Torres said.
The ACLU of New Jersey released a statement that said in part, “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.”
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka also pushed back saying ICE cannot lawfully open “without satisfying city property-use requirements, inspections, and permits,” and says an immigration detention center is “not welcomed here.”
Delaney Hall was an ICE detention center between 2011 and 2017.
GEO Group has been running it since then as a mandatory drug treatment center and halfway house.
It’s currently facing a lawsuit from the estate of a man who died while being held there.
No date has been set for its reopening to house ICE detainees.
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