A records request from the New Jersey Globe for information related to the Delaney Hall immigrant detention center has provided something that has long been elusive: the total number of detainees housed at the facility during one moment in time. The documents also confirm some details regarding the escape of four detainees during a chaotic day in June, including the use of gas to keep detainees in the facility.
As of June 13, the 1,000-bed facility held 859 detainees, according to the documents. In a sign of the turbulence of life inside the facility, the documents also detail how 400 detainees were set to be transferred to Texas and another 50 to Pennsylvania at the time.
The Globe had made repeated prior attempts to get information on how many detainees were held at the facility, but was unable to do so beyond word of mouth from advocates in contact with detainees and their families.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) releases regular data on detainee statistics that include breakdowns by facilities, but those data have a catch: they are based on running yearly averages of detainee populations, and because Delaney Hall only reopened in May, the averages include a number of months when the facility housed zero detainees. ICE statistics show the facility as housing only around 160 detainees as of earlier this month, and around 60 detainees in early June.
When the Globe asked for information on ICE’s statistics for a prior story, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) cast doubts on the numbers but did not provide an explanation for why they were anomalously low. The underlying conclusion of that story – that most detainees housed at Delaney Hall have no criminal convictions and are designated as having “no threat level” – remains accurate, since the numbers reflected in ICE’s data are simply a proportional fraction of the true detainee statistics.
The internal reports, obtained by the Globe through a Freedom of Information Act request, further confirm prior reporting on a hectic period in mid-June when officials delayed meals for several hours at a time, leading to unrest and the escape of four detainees from the facility. (Detainees said meals were not just delayed, but also insufficient, according to the New York Times.)
The reports state that the facility’s dining area was used to process a group of detainees, leading to a four-hour delay before breakfast and anger among those in Delaney Hall. Officials write that the situation calmed and detainees returned to their room without the use of a specialized crisis team, but hours later, a GEO official noticed bedsheets on a barbed-wire fence, and soon realized a group of four detainees had escaped. All four have since been arrested. The ICE report states the detainees shimmied a gate open during their escape, three days after GEO had been warned that the gate was not secure.
Efforts to count the building’s detainees in the aftermath of the chaos were complicated because GEO did not possess an accurate list of the people held in the facility. ICE officials were forced to do a hand count of detainees due to the list’s inaccuracies.
A GEO report also confirms what witnesses reported in the days after the incidents: that officials had used gas to “discourage” people from doing something. The section of the report detailing what officials feared exactly is redacted. The report did not specify the type of gas officials used.
Earlier this year, ICE signed a 15-year contract to use the facility for about $60 million per year. Baraka and other Democrats have said the facility is operating without the required permits and certificates, and the city of Newark is currently suing GEO Group over the matter.
Since its opening, Delaney Hall has been a hub for protests against Trump’s plans to deport millions of the country’s undocumented immigrants. The internal reports state protesters were there during the chaotic June day in Delaney Hall; one document states a protester slashed the tire of an FBI vehicle entering the facility. Newark police officers were present but did not assist in handling the demonstrators, according to the report, and the protesters mostly dispersed on their own by 3 a.m.
In a separate early May incident, officials arrested Newark Mayor Ras Baraka for alleged trespassing after a Delaney Hall official invited him onto the facility’s grounds; a federal judge dismissed the charges and reprimanded prosecutors a couple of weeks later. Federal prosecutors also charged Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-Newark) with assaulting law enforcement officers as demonstrators and police scuffled during Baraka’s arrest. McIver pleaded not guilty to the charges in June.
Delaney Hall ICE document 1
Delaney Hall ICE document 2
