Until a week ago, most of the country had no idea where — or what — Delaney Hall is. Now, protests outside of the immigrant detention facility in Newark, New Jersey, have taken over national news, as militarized Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and New Jersey state troopers have attacked and arrested demonstrators and bystanders alike, seeking to quell resistance at the newest focal point of President Donald Trump’s war on immigrants. 

The current crisis began on May 22, when a group of detainees inside began a hunger and labor strike over the “inhumane” conditions they said they were subjected to inside the facility, which is owned and operated by a private prison company called GEO Group. The detainees described disease, overflowing toilets, poor ventilation, and worm-riddled food — allegations that immediately sparked protests outside the facility. 

For several New Jersey lawmakers, Delaney Hall has been an issue since Trump retook office — and most of them have been willing to put their own skin in the game. Senator Andy Kim, Congresswoman LaMonica McIver, and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka have all made appearances at Delaney Hall since the president launched his brutal crackdown on immigrants last year.

Some of the visits have been dramatic. On May 25, Senator Kim was pepper sprayed as he attempted to de-escalate a confrontation between protesters and ICE agents. Congresswoman McIver currently faces federal charges for an alleged scuffle with a DHS officer at Delaney Hall last year. “I’ve been preaching the same thing for over a year now,” she tells Rolling Stone. “This facility should not be open.”

Baraka was arrested in the same incident that led to the charges against McIver. “We started this before they even put people in that detention facility,” he says. “It’s a protracted fight. Ultimately we want the building to be shut down.”

That fight has had several inflection points, including last May, when McIver and two other New Jersey members of Congress tried to conduct routine oversight of the facility shortly after it had opened. The appointment went off the rails fast. Employees of GEO Group were dragging their feet, stalling until a group of DHS agents arrived and threatened to arrest Baraka. The chaos continued outside, when protesters got involved. In the melee between cops, protesters, and members of Congress, the DHS alleges that McIver was guilty of “assaulting, impeding, and interfering” with a federal officer. 

“They looked at me as this young Black girl from the city of Newark — let’s target her,” McIver says. “If they’re doing this to me, see what they’re doing to everyone else.”

The vindictive charges, negligent treatment of detainees, and casual disregard of due process are all tied to greater policy goals that come from inside Trump’s administration. 

“This is truly a Stephen Miller special,” McIver says, referring to the key Trump adviser who has made immigration enforcement his top priority. “They’re weaponizing every system of the government for their racist goals.”

Part of the reason New Jersey’s local politicians are so pissed is that they never asked for this. Before 2025, Delaney Hall had sat empty for several years, after its last iteration as a halfway house closed down in 2023. GEO Group re-opened it in 2025 and promptly won a $1 billion contract from the Trump administration to house immigration detainees. Baraka says the entire process was flawed from the start: GEO Group ignored local laws and permitting, bypassed zoning processes, and opened its doors to a flood of detainees and government funding.

The Trump administration operates a “revolving door of corruption” with the major companies running private prisons, Kim says. The current head of ICE, David Venturella, was a senior vice president at GEO Group until 2023, and a paid consultant almost up until the moment he was appointed to lead the agency. Tom Homan, Trump’s “Border czar,” has taken consulting fees from the company. GEO Group and CoreCivic, another major private prison company, collectively donated nearly $2.8 million to Trump’s 2024 election campaign — gifts they have been paid back for in full by a wash of federal contracts like the one supporting Delaney Hall.

“They’re using this situation with ICE to enrich themselves,” Baraka says. “There are private prisons all over the country that are popping up trying to get these contracts. We need to exercise our authority on the local level to keep these people accountable.” 

But that authority isn’t always easy to use. Rep. McIver sits on the House Committee Homeland Security, which ostensibly has oversight over the actions of ICE and its subcontractors like GEO Group. But with Republicans in charge of Congress, she says it’s a constant “battle” with her counterparts to get any kind of accountability — or even an appearance at the committee — out of the Trump administration’s immigration apparatus. 

“We spend a lot of time talking about China and not talking about all of the issues that are happening right in our own homeland,” McIver says. “The ICE director came one time. Trying to get these people in front of you to hold them accountable — it’s impossible.”

McIver and the committee got another chance on Wednesday however, when newly appointed DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin appeared before lawmakers. McIver opened with a simple question: Has Mullin ever actually been to Delaney Hall? 

“No I have not,” Mullin answered.

McIver knew the answer, of course, but wanted it on the record. 

“This is a man who hasn’t stepped a foot inside this location,” McIver told Rolling Stone the day before the hearing. “He doesn’t know what’s going on, he’s just doing Trump’s bidding.”

McIver used the majority of her time at the hearing to lay out, in detail, the plight of detainees inside Delaney Hall, and call out Mullin’s political grandstanding. Mullin has called for the ending of international flights to airports in “sanctuary cities,” specifically threatening Newark in recent days as a response to the protests there. He smirked at the end of McIver’s speech. 

Elected officials who do attempt to visit Delaney Hall, meanwhile, meet a similar level of defiance. On Monday, May 25, New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill and Senator Kim attempted to inspect the facility. ICE, which had armed agents outside the facility clashing with protesters, refused to let them in. Federal agents refused to back down or de-escalate in any way, ratcheting up the tension. 

“There was just a feeling of inevitable violence over Delaney Hall that day,” Kim says. 

Kim tried to keep the peace, but when a conflict broke out with protesters, ICE started blasting away with pepper spray, catching Kim as well as his constituents. In a phone call this week, Kim was still noticeably frustrated by the experience. 

“There has to be some kind of effort to do this in a nonviolent way,” Kim says. “I was trying! And there was zero effort. They could care less. It really stuck with me. It was such a jarring experience just how little they cared.”

This casual brutality is baked into the system — designed by Trump, Miller, and their underlings to make navigating the immigration system in this country as painful as it possibly can be. The overflowing toilets, poor ventilation, even the abuse of protests outside — that’s all part of the plan. Kim says seeing — and feeling — this violence first hand gave it new meaning. 

“It crystalized for me the magnitude of this problem that we’re facing,” Kim says. “This cruelty that we’re seeing is intentional.”