ICE announced this week that it intends to contract with a private prison firm to house as many as 1,000 immigrant detainees at Delaney Hall in Newark. (Photo by New Jersey Monitor)
The largest federal immigration detention center on the east coast will open in Newark, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials announced Wednesday.
Delaney Hall, a 1,000-bed facility located next to the Essex County jail, will be the first immigration detention center to open under the Trump administration. The facility’s owner, private prison contractor Geo Group, said Thursday it signed a 15-year contract with ICE worth more than $60 million.
ICE officials said the new detention center would help it manage growing arrests and deportations ordered under President Donald Trump, who campaigned for reelection pledging a mass deportation effort. Delaney Hall’s closeness to Newark airport is also key, according to ICE.
“The location near an international airport streamlines logistics, and helps facilitate the timely processing of individuals in our custody as we pursue President Trump’s mandate to arrest, detain and remove illegal aliens from our communities,” acting ICE director Caleb Vitello said in a statement.
I think what’s really surprising here is not that the site is opening. It’s that we’ve waited this long and still have done nothing.
– Amy Torres, executive director for the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice
In an earnings call Thursday, Geo Group officials said they expect to open Delaney Hall by the end of June, and that expanding detention capacity to address “unprecedented” enforcement efforts is a priority under the Trump administration.
George Zoley, CEO of the prison company, said Delaney Hall is “brand-new inside and it’s all ready to go. All we need to do is the recruitment, the hiring, the background screening, and the training.”
Delaney Hall housed immigrant detainees between 2011 and 2017. Geo Group has been considering reopening it since at least April 2024, when it sued New Jersey over a state law that bars private and public companies from contracting with ICE to house immigrant detainees. A federal judge in 2023 ruled that the law is unconstitutional as it pertains to private companies, a ruling that New Jersey has appealed and has yet to be heard by a federal appellate court.
Michael Symons, a spokesman for Attorney General Matt Platkin, said the office hopes the judge’s ruling will be overturned on appeal.
“Private detention facilities threaten the public health and safety of New Jerseyans, including when used for immigration purposes,” Symons said.
When it opens, Delaney Hall will be the state’s second private detention center for immigrants. The other is the Elizabeth Detention Center, which can hold about 300 detainees.
Amy Torres, executive director for the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, criticized lawmakers for not acting on this issue while the Trump administration touted plans of mass deportation.
“I think what’s really surprising here is not that the site is opening. It’s that we’ve waited this long and still have done nothing,” she said. “The question of what more they could have done suggests they’ve done anything.”
Torres said critical protections could be put in place through the proposed Immigrant Trust Act legislation that has stalled in the Statehouse. The bill would bar public schools, health care facilities, shelters, and libraries from collecting data on immigration status and codify bans on local law enforcement from working with federal immigration authorities.
“The truth is, as soon as the first ruling was laid down, New Jersey should have gotten to acting on protecting immigrant communities, and they just, frankly, haven’t,” she said.
Rep. Rob Menendez (D-08) also urged lawmakers to pass the legislation, stressing that the unveiling of a new detention center in New Jersey is a clear signal of ramped-up enforcement removal efforts here.
“If they didn’t think the threat was real already, their eyes should be wide open right now, and the Immigrant Trust Act should be passed into law right now,” he told the New Jersey Monitor.
The Department of Homeland Security has touted a spike in arrests of undocumented immigrants since Trump regained the White House in January, saying Wednesday that more than 20,000 migrants have been arrested in that time. Raids have been reported around the state, from Union City to Haddon Township.
Newark made national headlines after ICE detained several migrants and questioned U.S. citizens at a warehouse in the city days after Trump took office. Thursday, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka condemned the plans to reopen Delaney Hall as “nothing short of lawlessness.”
“We are a nation of laws. We will not stand by while ICE, under the heavy-handed policies of the Trump administration, operates with impunity — violating not only our values but the very legal processes that govern this country. This is more of the same bully behavior from Washington, which disregards the Constitution when it is convenient for their agenda,” he said in a statement.
Baraka said he will “explore every legal and political avenue” to challenge ICE’s move.
ICE is also exploring reopening the Albert M. “Bo” Robinson Treatment Center, a 1,000-bed facility in Trenton that held state prisoners until 2022. According to records obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union in November, ICE is looking to house at least 600 immigrants there.
Menendez said lawmakers got “no heads up” about the decision to reopen Delaney Hall, but already knew the direction the administration was heading. During a recent visit to the Elizabeth Detention Center, the facility was nearing capacity, he said.
Eliana Fernández, director of organizing for immigrant advocacy group Make the Road New Jersey, said state officials have the ability to increase funding for deportation defense and ensure state resources won’t help ICE detain and deport immigrants.
“We must fight back against the narrative that detention and deportation is a moral crusade and a public good, but that in fact these are simply efforts to funnel public resources into the private prison industry,” she said.
Spokespeople for Senate President Nicholas Scutari (D-Union) and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin (D-Middlesex) declined to comment. Earlier this week, Scutari said he doesn’t think the state needs to pass the Immigrant Trust Act, citing a 2018 attorney general’s directive offering some protections, like barring local police from sharing data with ICE and cooperating in civil immigration enforcement operations. He believes expanding and codifying that directive would open the state up to a lawsuit.
A spokesman for the Murphy administration also declined to comment. In his budget address Tuesday, Murphy said he would defend immigrant communities and wants to give the Attorney General’s Office $1 million to fight lawsuits against the Trump administration.
Torres said ICE’s move to reopen Delaney Hall is an opportunity for Murphy to “show us what that looks like.”
“The very first ICE facility under the Trump administration is opening in your own backyard, your largest city,” she said. “So you’re a target anyway, whether you have the courage to act or not.”
Immigration news for New Jersey
As President Trump reshapes immigration policy and ramps up enforcement, the New Jersey Monitor will detail how these changes affect our state’s residents. You can help us by making a donation to support more in-depth coverage of immigration.