Newark says private-prison firm is illegally renovating migrant detention center

The City of Newark is suing a private-prison company, alleging the firm is illegally renovating a Newark facility that the company plans to use as a migrant detention facility. 

In a filing early Tuesday morning, the city accused GEO Group of beginning construction at Delaney Hall without obtaining the proper safety inspections and construction permits. GEO Group and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement plan to use Delaney Hall as a 1,000-bed migrant detention facility, efforts that Newark Mayor Ras Baraka said he’ll fight by any means possible. 

“The agreement between ICE and the GEO Group to use Delaney Hall with the intention of incarcerating and holding immigrants slated for deportation does not supersede the ordinances and procedures legislated by the City of Newark and the State of New Jersey,” Baraka said in a statement Monday. “As I have stated in the past, without compliance with requirements, Delaney Hall cannot lawfully open. We will not tolerate federal attempts to ignore or evade our laws and statutes, which apply to everyone.”

GEO Group and ICE plan to open the facility by June, but city officials say the company has failed to obtain a certificate of continued occupancy, any construction permits, construction inspections, fire inspections, elevator certification, or other permits needed for a facility like Delaney Hall. 

A spokesperson for GEO Group said the lawsuit is “politically motivated” but did not address allegations that the company has failed to obtain the required permits.

“The attempt by local and state officials to stop the opening of a lawful federal immigration processing center at the Delaney Hall facility in Newark is another unfortunate example of a politicized campaign by sanctuary city and open borders politicians in New Jersey to interfere with the federal government’s efforts to arrest, detain, and deport dangerous criminal illegal aliens in accordance with established federal law,” a GEO Group spokesperson said in a statement.

The lawsuit alleges city and state inspection officials visited Delaney Hall on Monday, but workers from GEO Group refused to let the inspectors onto the premises.

The city filed the lawsuit in state Superior Court and asked a judge to require GEO Group to allow inspectors into the building and to comply with the city’s permitting policies.

Baraka, a progressive candidate for governor, joined protesters last month outside Delaney Hall and pledged to use his power as mayor to keep the center closed. Delaney Hall shuttered in 2017, but ICE and GEO Group reached a 15-year agreement to reopen the facility. The contract is expected to be worth about $60 million a year.

ICE said the facility is needed to help proceed with President Donald Trump’s plans for mass deportations. Newark’s representatives in Congress have also disavowed the imminent reopening of Delaney Hall.

At last month’s rally, 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 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 backs of working people, particularly Black and Brown people.”

The Newark suit isn’t the only potential legal challenge to Delaney Hall. A federal appeals court will hold a hearing in late April or early May to determine the legality of a 2021 New Jersey law banning immigration detention center contracts.

A federal judge ruled in 2023 that New Jersey couldn’t ban private prison operators from contracting with immigration agencies because of the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause, which prevents state law from overruling federal law. That ruling opened the door for GEO Group to begin the process of reopening Delaney Hall.