The attorney general of New Jersey on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the private company operating the Delaney Hall Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center, demanding access for health officials amid allegations of “inhumane and unsanitary conditions”.
Immigrants locked up at the federal detention center in Newark began a hunger and labor strike more than 10 days ago to protest against conditions, while demonstrations built up outside that veered into violent scenes after dark.
Tuesday’s lawsuit, filed by Jennifer Davenport, the state’s attorney general, asks the state superior court in Newark to order the private operator, the Geo Group, to grant the New Jersey department of health full access to the facility to conduct inspections.
New Jersey’s governor, Mikie Sherrill, and other elected officials went to Delaney Hall over the Memorial Day holiday weekend after the hunger strike started but a statement from Davenport’s office on Tuesday said: “GEO Group refused to respond to demands by the governor, elected officials, and protesters for full transparency into conditions at Delaney Hall.”
Last Thursday, New Jersey department of health inspectors were allowed a limited inspection of the detention center but, Davenport’s office said, were barred from inspecting crucial areas such as the medical unit, sleeping, bathing and toilet areas.
“If the GEO Group – with a $1bn 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,” Sherrill said in a statement on Tuesday.
Comment has been requested from Geo Group, the defendant named in the lawsuit, which is based in Florida and owns and operates Delaney Hall as well as many other ICE detention facilities. The plaintiff is Raynard Washington, the commissioner for the New Jersey department of health.
Meanwhile the Democratic governor has come under fire from people protesting against ICE and the continued operation of the detention center. Sherrill has been accused of not working hard enough to gain access to Delaney Hall and is now being sharply criticized by some for sending in the state police to guard the facility, replacing the lines of ICE officers last weekend after violent clashes with protesters. But the state police quickly became involved in their own aggressive confrontations that turned violent, and they began rapidly arresting people.
And on Tuesday, as the lawsuit was being filed by Davenport’s office, activists were protesting outside her office in Newark, also complaining about the ways the attorney general, the governor and the state authorities have responded to the controversy over Delaney Hall.
“Now you’re doing something after beating people and locking them up in jail?” asked Ben Dziobek, an activist with Climate Revolution Action Network in New Jersey. Dziobek attended protests regularly at Delaney Hall, he said, adding: “That’s not enough.”
Another activist at Tuesday’s protest, Alexia Diaz, said the protests and other advocacy efforts were working to place pressure on the state government.
“That’s great progress, that means that what we’re doing is working, but it’s not enough,” Diaz said of the lawsuit, pointing to the demands by the hunger strikers that advocates say have not been met. One of the strikers’ primary demands has been to meet with the governor.
The lawsuit says that health inspectors need to examine living areas because they wish to “ascertain whether defendant is 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 suit notes that there has been public reporting of the unchecked spread of communicable diseases, including Covid-19 and influenza, at the facility and “direct reports” to the state health department about “unsanitary bathroom conditions and potentially inadequate tuberculosis infection control practices”.
