Crowds have been gathering nightly outside Delaney Hall, a federal immigration detention centre in Newark, New Jersey, chanting in support of the detainees inside. The scenes, captured on video and shared widely across social media, have drawn international attention to a facility that has become one of the most fiercely contested flashpoints in President Donald Trump's push for mass deportation.
The 1,196-bed facility, located in an industrial area on the outskirts of Newark, opened on 1 May 2025 and currently houses a daily population of around 908 detainees, according to federal data compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. Operated by the GEO Group under a federal contract reportedly worth $1 billion (approx £790 million) over 15 years, Delaney Hall has faced sustained scrutiny from immigrant rights organisations and local officials since it first opened.
