Health officials in New Jersey are suing the private prison firm that runs a controversial immigration detention center facing a nearly two-week-long strike among detainees and ongoing protests over allegations of deteriorating conditions inside.
A lawsuit from the New Jersey Department of Health demands “immediate entry” to Delaney Hall after investigators were provided only limited access to the facility despite growing complaints from immigrant detainees, lawyers and families alleging overcrowded and inhumane conditions, including “potentially inadequate tuberculosis infection control practices.”
Inspectors initially tried to enter Delaney Hall on May 27 but they were barred from “full access” to the facility, according to a civil complaint filed on Tuesday.
Health inspectors were barred from the jail’s medical unit, toilets, shower facilities and sleeping areas, they said. The state’s health department is “unable to ascertain” whether GEO Group and Immigration and Customs Enforcement are “taking sufficient precautions to mitigate the serious and unchecked risk of communicable diseases to both detainees at Delaney Hall and New Jersey’s public at large.”
The lawsuit comes as GEO Group and ICE face daily demonstrations from dozens of protesters to support detainees have been on a hunger strike to protest what they have described as rotting food, due process violations, a lack of access to legal counsel and retaliation from ICE agents for their ongoing strike actions.
The 1,000-bed, two-story detention center opened May 1, 2025, and is operated by private prison contractor GEO Group. Donald Trump’s administration awarded the company a 15-year, $1 billion contract to run the facility.
State health inspections “are designed to detect and assess whether there exist current practices or conditions in a particular facility or premises that could facilitate the unchecked transmission of foodborne, airborne, or other communicable diseases,” according to the lawsuit.
“If left unchecked and unabated, an outbreak of communicable disease could impact not only the facility’s residents, but also the public health at large, if employees or other visitors to the facility contract and transmit these diseases after they have departed the facility,” lawyers for the state’s health department wrote.
Public health concerns inside Delaney Hall reached a tipping point last month after a letter signed by roughly 300 detainees alleged a “high spread” of COVID-19 and flu, while detainees with HIV, cancer, diabetes and “heart problems” and other conditions were left untreated, they wrote.
Members of Congress who visited the facility in recent weeks also reported that detainees complained to them about rotting food and lack of medical care.
Democratic Sen. Andy Kim said one pregnant detainee told him she has not been able to receive full obstetrics and gynecological care. Another detainee told him she was left to manage a miscarriage on her own.
On May 28, state health officials received a complaint from a physician who reported that one detainee from Delaney Hall was brought to University Hospital with an active case of tuberculosis.
Health inspectors were allowed inside the facility that same day after several previous attempts were denied.
Inspectors urged administration officials to let them perform full inspection on Monday and sought “assurances that ICE would not obstruct” the health department from exercising its authority, according to the complaint.
But an official told the health department that inspectors “would not be able to inspect any areas of the facility other than the food service areas it had already visited,” the lawsuit states.
“If the GEO Group — with a $1 billion government contract — has nothing to hide and the conditions inside Delaney Hall are as safe and as sanitary as this private corporation and the Trump administration claim, then there is no legitimate reason why my health inspectors are being kept from full access throughout the building,” New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill said in a statement.
The lawsuit follows a renewed push from Newark Mayor Ras Baraka to widen the scope of the city’s federal lawsuit against GEO Group after an initial complaint was filed last year over health and safety concerns.
Sherrill and several elected officials are also urging ICE to close the facility altogether.
The Independent has requested comment from GEO Group.
Homeland Security has repeatedly denied allegations of abuse, overcrowding and inhumane conditions inside, and Secretary Markwayne Mullin has dismissed reports of a hunger strike as detainees complaining about a lack of access to “ethnic food.”
“Well, they can go back to their country and get whatever food they want,” he said during a White House cabinet meeting last week. “We’re giving them the calories they want. This isn’t Holiday Inn.”
Tensions outside the facility have boiled over into violence in recent days, with immigration officers and New Jersey State Police beating back protesters who have remained outside the jail for nearly two weeks.
At least 61 people were arrested on Sunday night. The Newark Police Department took command of the police response on Monday.
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