Guards at a New Jersey immigrant detention center are retaliating against detainees for nonviolent protests over poor conditions, including a hunger and labor strike, according to relatives and members of Congress.
Staff at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Delaney Hall Detention Facility — a Newark immigration jail operated by the private prison giant GEO Group — took steps to crack down on the strikes, including attacking immigration detainees with pepper spray and batons, transferring protest leaders to other facilities, and shutting down family visitation, advocates and relatives of detainees told The Intercept.
“Detainees told me about scalding hot showers that have led to burns and blisters; worms in food; and being denied medical care.”
One woman who spoke with her nephew inside Delaney Hall told The Intercept that she was told negotiations were set to take place between guards and striking inmates — but instead, her nephew reported, guards attacked the detainees with pepper spray.
“My nephew can’t see right now because he was hit on the head with a baton,” said the woman, who requested anonymity for fear of further retaliation against her nephew. “Prison operators told my nephew and the others on the hunger strike that ICE was going to negotiate on Thursday. They got hit instead.”
Members of Congress from New Jersey and New York made repeated visits to inspect the facility this week. On Wednesday, New York Democratic Reps. Dan Goldman and Jerry Nadler emerged from Delaney Hall looking deeply shaken and spoke of hearing about miserable conditions inside with no doctor onsite.
“Detainees told me about scalding hot showers that have led to burns and blisters; worms in food; and being denied medical care, visitation rights, and time outdoors,” Goldman told The Intercept. “Many of them believed that this treatment is in retribution for the ongoing hunger strike, which they have initiated to bring attention to the horrific conditions they are enduring despite having committed no serious crimes.”
The alleged retaliation against detainees matches a long-standing pattern, according to a 2021 report from the American Civil Liberties Union, which detailed systematic abuses carried out against hunger strikers at dozens of facilities across 24 states.
In a post to X on Thursday, Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., said he was barred from visiting the unit on which the physical abuses were alleged to have taken place, but said he spoke with detainees on another unit who reported several of their fellows being taken to the hospital for injuries sustained in attacks by guards.
In a statement to The Intercept, GEO Group spokesperson Christopher Ferreira confirmed the use of chemical agents against detainees on Thursday as part of a “physical altercation involving detainees at Delaney Hall,” but did not address questions about the attacks on detainees coming as retaliation.
“In accordance with established policies and protocols approved by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” Ferreira said, “staff implemented appropriate response and control measures to safely resolve the situation, including the limited use of chemical agents.”
The accusations came amid ongoing protests outside the facility, at which federal agents have repeatedly attacked demonstrators, including family members of those inside, with pepper spray and batons. (ICE referred a request for comment its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, which did not immediately respond.)
For nearly a week, family members have been denied visitation, and protesters have set up a tent outside Delaney Hall to provide support for those who had hoped to visit their loved ones inside.
“Relatives of detainees haven’t been let in since Saturday,” said Ana Paola Pazmino, the director of Resistencia en Acción NJ, a local grassroots group. “This is despite the fact that DHS has said there has been no hunger strike. They are liars.”
Detainees stand by a window inside the ICE Delaney Hall Detention Facility on May 26, 2026, in Newark, N.J. Photo: Adam Gray/Getty Images
Protesting Poor Conditions
The hunger and labor strikes began last week when detainees began refusing food and stopped showing up for their jobs to protest their poor conditions inside the facility. Among their demands are the release of elderly and very young detainees and those with serious medical conditions.
In response to a call from one detainee leader’s wife for solidarity demonstrations, protests began gathering outside the facility on May 21, with demonstrators showing up virtually around the clock every day since, despite attacks by armed ICE agents.
[
Related
Trump Is Prosecuting a Congressional Democrat for Doing Her Job. The Media’s Response: No Big Deal.](https://theintercept.com/2025/05/20/trump-prosecuting-democrat-mciver-ice-media/)
Andre Beresford Burger, an organizer with the group Movimiento Cosecha, told The Intercept on Thursday that he had been pepper-sprayed by ICE agents but remained undeterred.
“If ICE agents are willing to storm into a crowd and brutalize people on camera and in front of the press,” he said, “what does this say about what they’re doing to people inside immigration detention, away from the cameras?”
“If ICE agents are willing to storm into a crowd and brutalize people on camera, what does this say about what they’re doing to people inside?”
Deploring the conditions, members of Congress called for Delaney Hall to be closed.
“The situation here just gets worse every day,” Pallone, the House member from New Jersey, said in a video after visiting the facility. “This place needs to be closed down. The conditions are horrible. You can’t get due process, you can’t see a doctor on any kind of regular basis. The reality is that ICE and the Department of Homeland Security … are trying to ship people out that are trying to tell the stories.”
Ferreira, the GEO Group spokesperson, denied reports of poor conditions at the facility, which he labeled a “coordinated, politically motivated campaign by outside groups to dismantle ICE and federal immigration detention.”
[
Related
Deportation, Inc.](https://theintercept.com/2025/12/19/deportation-abrego-garcia-ice-immigration/)
On Thursday evening, New Jersey state troopers and Newark police shut down traffic on Doremus Avenue, the industrial thoroughfare on which Delaney Hall sits, but protests continued well into the night. Long standoffs between demonstrators and ICE agents were punctuated by bursts of violent aggression from federal officers, who swung at protesters with batons, doused them in pepper spray, and fired pepper balls into the crowd.
From outside Delaney Hall, detainees could be seen in windows raising their fists and lights could be seen flickering periodically, a signal from those inside that they heard their supporters on the outside.
The post ICE Pepper-Sprayed, Beat Detainees for Protesting “Horrific Conditions” In Delaney Hall Jail appeared first on The Intercept.
From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.