This past Saturday marked one year since an oversight visit at the Delaney Hall ICE detention center in Newark went dramatically awry, and the trio of House Democrats who were involved in the now-infamous scuffle have a new bill to protect future oversight visits.
Under the bill co-authored by Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing), Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City), and LaMonica McIver (D-Newark), the rights of members of Congress to conduct detention center oversight visits would be officially codified. Those rights are already guaranteed under a bill first passed in 2019, but the Trump administration has nevertheless attempted to add new roadblocks, including requiring advance notice from members.
The New Jersey Democrats’ bill, the No Delay for Immigration Oversight Act, would ensure “immediate” access and terminate federal contracts with private entities that don’t follow the new law. (Delaney Hall is run by GEO Group, a private prison contractor.)
“A year ago, ICE tried to stop me from exposing the cruel treatment, inhumane abuse, and their reckless lack of accountability – believing they could sweep their actions under the rug,” McIver said in a statement. “That’s why I’m introducing this bill to reaffirm the people’s right to have someone speak up for the voiceless, go where others are not allowed, uncover the abuses that we know take place in the dark, and stop the brutality against our immigrant neighbors.”
When McIver, Menendez, and Watson Coleman visited Delaney Hall on May 9, 2025, the facility had only just reopened, over the protests of local elected officials who said that GEO Group had not obtained the necessary permits. One of those local officials, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, attempted to join the House members on their visit, but was arrested for trespassing after being allowed inside the facility’s gates.
Those charges were dropped soon afterwards, but another longer-term consequence of the visit is still ongoing: federal charges against Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-Newark), who is alleged to have assaulted law enforcement officers while trying to protect Baraka. McIver has pleaded not guilty, and an appellate court will hear arguments about whether to throw out the charges in June.
The visit also precipitated a broader effort by the Trump administration to limit congressional access to detention facilities, particularly by adding new advance notice requirements, which Democrats say would allow ICE to make facilities more presentable before they visit. A judge temporarily blocked the new requirements in a ruling last week, but the legal fight is likely to continue for months to come.
Delaney Hall itself remains operational to this day and houses hundreds of immigrant detainees, many of whom are picked up by ICE in the New Jersey and New York area and eventually shuttled off to other detention facilities around the country. ICE also has a second, smaller detention facility in Elizabeth, and has much-contested plans to open a third in Roxbury.
Reps. Menendez and Nellie Pou (D-North Haledon) conducted another Delaney Hall visit on Monday, and Menendez said conditions there continue to dismay him.
“No improvements – only more heartbreaking stories,” he said on social media. “We need to keep the pressure on to close this facility – for good.”