More than a hundred activists and protesters gathered outside a planned immigrant detention center in Newark on Tuesday afternoon as Mayor Ras Baraka pledged to do everything within his power to keep the facility from opening.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced last month that Delaney Hall, a 1,000-bed immigrant detention center that had been shuttered since 2017, will reopen this year. Activists said the facility, which is owned by private-prison company GEO Group and slated to open in June, would quadruple the immigration detention capacity in New Jersey and be the largest detention center on the East Coast.
Newark has been at the forefront of the struggle between Trump’s deportation efforts and immigrant activists. Just days into the second Trump term, ICE agents raided a fish market detaining both U.S. citizens and undocumented immigrants in the process. Baraka, who is running for governor, said the raid was warrantless and accused the agency of violating the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.
The push to open Delaney Hall is likely to become a major political and legal battle. Baraka has said GEO Group has failed to obtain proper occupancy permits and inspections—the mayor said he would not allow operations to proceed if the company fails to follow Newark’s laws.
Baraka said the move to reopen Delaney Hall isn’t an attempt to solve an actual issue facing the country, but rather a move to help private-prison companies operating such facilities.
“It is an opportunity for them to make billions of dollars,” Baraka said at the Tuesday rally. “This is really what the foundation of this is about. It’s not about anything else. It’s about folks making billions of dollars off of the back of working people, particularly Black and Brown people.”
Delaney Hall would be the first detention center to open since Trump’s inauguration, according to ICE. The agency said the facility is needed to process the increased number of arrests expected under the Trump administration.
GEO Group said it signed a 15-year Delaney Hall contract with ICE expected to be worth about $60 million a year.
Baraka said he has not heard from Gov. Phil Murphy or New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin about the facility. The New Jersey Attorney General’s Office has asked a federal judge for a hearing in a case that could bar GEO Group from opening Delaney Hall, according to the New Jersey Monitor. A hearing is expected to be held the week of April 28, according to a scheduling order.
The New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, a coalition of state advocacy groups, organized the protest, which was held outside the fences of Delaney Hall. The protest included activists from 32BJ SEIU, the Ironbound Community Corporation, the Latino Action Network, and Migrante New Jersey, among others.
Eliana Fernández, the organizing director of the progressive immigrant advocacy group Make the Road New Jersey, was one of several organizers to call on state legislators to pass the Immigrant Trust Act. The bill would bar government agencies and healthcare providers from asking about the immigration status of New Jerseyans seeking services, but legislative leaders haven’t yet moved to make the bill law.
“It takes a village, my people, it takes a village,” Fernández said about the help needed from legislators.
Tuesday’s demonstrators specifically disavowed the detainment of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate who has organized protests on the campus since the start of the war in Gaza. Khalil’s lawyer has said the government revoked his green card because of his activism. A White House official told The Free Press that Khalil is not accused of breaking the law.
The Trump administration accused Khalil of leading “activities aligned to Hamas” but hasn’t accused him of having contact with the group or working at its direction, according to the New York Times.
“This type of behavior is not only an assault on Mahmoud and his family and immigrants and the pro-Palestinian movement, but it is an assault on the First Amendment, it is an assault on the Constitution, and it is an assault on all of us, all residents of this country,” said Selaedin Maksut, the executive director of Council on American–Islamic Relations New Jersey.
A judge has temporarily blocked the government from deporting Khalil, who is being held at an immigrant detention facility in Louisiana.
Trump, who won a second term in the Oval Office in November, made mass deportations a central plank of his campaign. When asked how Baraka plans to convince people who support Trump that the president’s efforts are going too far, the mayor said there is no easy answer.
“You’ve got to keep talking and keep arguing,” Baraka told reporters. “I mean people agreed with Jim Crow until we got rid of it, right? So at the end of the day, that’s what you have to do.”
The mayor said progressives must resist Republican leaders not just on immigration but also on issues like Medicaid and diversity, equity, and inclusion, which he says are under attack.
“This is what we do in our community in Newark, because this is a city of immigrants,” Baraka said. “It has always been a city of immigrants, and a city of working people, and a port city trying to find a journey towards democracy.”
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