Body
New Jersey’s Delaney Hall immigration detention center partly restored family visitation on Sunday, ending a suspension that had lasted about a week and coincided with an ongoing hunger and labor strike by detainees and demonstrations outside the facility in Newark.
Governor Mikie Sherrill and the Department of Homeland Security both confirmed the restoration on Sunday morning, though they offered competing accounts of who had initiated it. Sherrill’s office said Saturday that DHS had “met our demand” to restore visitation. A DHS spokesperson disputed that characterization.
“To be clear: Visitation was only suspended because of violent riots,” the DHS spokesperson said. “Now that we have a secure perimeter, visitation can resume.”
Facility staff confirmed that visitation resumed in Unit 1, a women’s section, beginning around noon, and in Unit 3 beginning around 2 p.m. local time, according to the Guardian. Unit 2, where the majority of hunger-striking detainees are based, did not have confirmed access to family visitation on Sunday. Families arriving at the facility received conflicting information about which detainees would be eligible for visits.
The road leading to Delaney Hall was blocked by police except for families attempting to visit detained loved ones, state officials said.
The restoration followed a night of clashes on Saturday in which state police deployed tear gas canisters and stun guns against protesters. Three people were arrested Saturday night, according to Sherrill’s office. The night before, on Friday, state police officers in riot gear arrested six people while breaking up demonstrations, the Guardian reported.
The confrontation began on May 22, when between 300 and 400 detainees inside Delaney Hall announced a hunger and labor strike. The detainees demanded improved conditions, medical care, a meeting with Sherrill and that their immigration cases proceed. Visitation was subsequently canceled, and protests began outside the facility.
The demonstrations escalated after Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers pepper-sprayed U.S. Senator Andy Kim, a New Jersey Democrat, outside the facility during an encounter earlier in the week. ICE officers also used pepper spray and stun guns throughout the demonstrations and shoved and arrested protesters, according to the Guardian.
On Friday, Sherrill announced that New Jersey state police would replace ICE officers outside Delaney Hall. State police set up roadblocks around half a mile on either side of the detention center. That night, clashes erupted when state police moved in on protesters, with officers on horseback advancing through the crowd and riot-gear officers firing tear gas canisters.
Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigrant Coalition, criticized Sherrill’s handling of the protests.
“The escalation that happened [on Friday] was ten times worse than what ICE was doing to everyone prior nights,” Awawdeh said in an interview Saturday outside the facility. “If anything, the escalators were the state police.”
Baraka, Newark’s mayor, responded to the Saturday-night clashes by imposing an indefinite overnight curfew from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. for the area surrounding Delaney Hall. Baraka’s office warned that people who did not disperse during curfew hours could face arrest or legal action.
U.S. Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the top House Democrat from neighboring New York, conducted an oversight visit to Delaney Hall on Sunday and said the conditions of confinement “shock the conscience.”
Sherrill’s office and GEO Group, the private prison company that operates the facility, did not respond to requests for comment, according to the Guardian.