We went to Delaney Hall Detention Center in Newark for about 5 hours yesterday (6/29/25) and I need to tell you what we saw and heard.  

Who was waiting? 
-Pregnant mothers with small children waiting to see their husbands. 
-Teenagers trying to see their mother. 
-Husbands with small children in tow, trying to see their wife.  
-Friends who drove for hours. 
-Clergy
-People trying to drop off much needed medicine.
-A young father with his 4 month old baby, begging security to let his wife nurse their baby who is refusing to eat.  

So many of these people were detained at immigration court or as they worked.  

We heard stories of ICE trying to trick detainees into self-deporting.  We heard stories of people being deprived of medicine, of people being moved from one facility to the next and losing the will to live.  

Delaney Hall is situated on a 4 lane road in an industrial park.  Visiting hours are on Saturdays and Sundays and the area is empty save for people coming and going into the detention center and the jail nearby.  Visitors attempted to park along the road, in a place they were allowed to park the week before.  Shortly before their visiting time was scheduled to begin, approximately 5 police vehicles and a tow truck began forcing people to move their cars.  To where? There was nowhere. When Jay and I told the PD that we were trying to find out where they could go.  PD just repeated over and over, they can’t park here–I’ll ticket and have them towed. As we were trying to navigate this with the police and the families, using google translate and my poor Spanish, we got a ticket.  

Thanks to the kindness of a convenience store clerk far down the road, people were able to park there.  But had to run over a city block to make sure they didn’t miss their appointment time.  It was cruel and incredibly inhumane.  With the callousness with which Newark PD handled the situation, we could not help but think it was either orchestrated, or opportunistic.  Either way, they were not protecting and serving the public, and hardly keeping anyone safe.  

We learned that the rules at Delaney Hall change from day to day, hour to hour.  There’s no way to know what those rules are until you arrive and wait and learn about them at the gate.  In the course of one day, GEO group, which is a billion dollar private prison firm, decided to limit visiting to the first 15 families.  But no one knew that until they drove to Newark, waited for hours outside the gate, waited for over an hour inside the gate, only to be turned away.  Families shared that they’ve been coming for weeks and after haven’t been able to make contact with their loved ones.  People are withering inside.  

Women were being told they weren’t allowed in based on their attire. Women wearing leggings and tank tops were prohibited from entering.  Thankfully, a volunteer brought extra clothes.  
-If you wear a skirt or dress, it must “extend to knee, seated.”
 -“Tight fitting clothing is prohibited.” 
“The wearing of t-shirts or other form fitting clothes by female visitors without bras is prohibited.”  

Every single part of this recount should be sounding alarm bells.  Unless we stop this, the responsibility lies with every single one of us.

Michele Messer, CRI Immigration Committee