President Donald Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, tried to assuage concerns about the conditions at a migrant detention center in New Jersey by raving about its food.
Homan told Fox and Friends on Monday that he visited Delaney Hall in New Jersey and ate with some of detained migrants. The detainees have previously claimed that they’d been given food that was expired or full of maggots and that they’ve been left to swelter in overcrowded cells without sufficient temperature regulation. Their alleged experiences at the facility have resulted in reported labor and hunger strikes inside the facility and protests outside.
Congressional Democrats from New York City have visited the facility and said that conditions are deplorable. The Department of Homeland Security has denied the portrayal of the facility by lawmakers.
Homan, meanwhile, told Fox that he visited and “went through every square foot” of Delaney Hall. He said he also shared a meal with the detainees and didn’t announce his visit beforehand.
“I hear a lot of complaining about the food. I went there unannounced the following day, unannounced. I went there and had lunch. I sat there in the cafeteria with detainees. Had the same meal they had…It was spaghetti and meat sauce. It was green beans. It was charro beans. It was rolls and butter,” he said. “It was a few drinks. It was dessert. I ate it. Now, is it a five star cuisine, no. But was it a well-established meal? Yes, it was. Matter of fact, I didn’t even finish it all, and I’m not a little guy.”
Homan’s comments appear unlikely to quell the protests around the detention facility, however.
Since May, more than 80 protesters have been arrested outside Delaney Hall. Clashes between ICE agents and protesters have resulted in injuries while, in late May, U.S. Senator Andy Kim was pepper-sprayed by federal agents.
Despite the protests and complaints from lawmakers, the Trump administration has given its full support to the privately-operated facility.
The center is operated by private prison contractor GEO Group, which has dismissed the allegations against Delaney Hall as “a politically motivated campaign by outside groups to dismantle ICE and federal immigration detention by targeting the government’s facility contractors.”
On May 27, New Jersey Department of Health inspectors tried to enter the facility but were barred from having “full access.” They are now suing to obtain such access.
The inspectors who did get inside were reportedly not allowed to see the showers, medical rooms, toilets, and sleeping areas.
The department ultimately ruled that it was “unable to ascertain” whether GEO Group and the Department of Homeland Security were “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 state explained the necessity for the inspections in its lawsuit, saying that 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.”
“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,” the filing said.
New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill said that if the detention center has nothing to hide, it should let her inspectors have the access they need.
“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,” she said in a statement.
