Lamonica Mciver joins call to shut Delaney Hall after 680-person tour
lamonica mciver was raised in the Monday tour of Delaney Hall after Reps. Rob Menendez and Nellie Pou spent two hours inside the Newark immigration detention center and called for it to shut down. They said the facility holds 680 detainees and that their visit centered on overcrowding, medical care and food.
Menendez and Pou at Delaney Hall
The lawmakers said they spoke with over two dozen detainees during the visit. Menendez said the conditions were inhuman and said the facility needs to be shut down. Pou said the people they saw were being held at a center used by ICE to house people taken into custody.
Menendez said, “That’s what I think they’re trying to do inside there. They’re trying to break people. So people give up. People are so demoralized that they will sign voluntary departure papers to not have to be in there anymore.” Pou said, “None of them were charged with any high level crime, none of them,”
680 detainees in Newark
The tour put a number to the scale of the operation at Delaney Hall: 680 detainees. Menendez and Pou said overcrowding in rooms, timely medical treatment and adequate food were still problems one year after the facility opened in Newark.
The center is run by The GEO Group under a 15-year contract with the U.S. government. Menendez also said one woman held there is a mother of two who brought her daughter to the United States for medical treatment she could not get in her country of origin.
GEO Group contract
The lawmakers said their visit was meant to improve conditions for people being held and to shed light on those being arrested by ICE. For people inside Delaney Hall, the immediate issue is not the contract itself but what Menendez and Pou said they encountered: crowded rooms, delayed care and food they said remains inadequate.
The shutdown call now puts pressure on the facility’s operators and on the government contract behind it. The next step is whether that demand leads to any formal action, but the lawmakers already used their visit to make the public case against keeping Delaney Hall open.
