Members of Congress are decrying conditions at an immigration detention center in New Jersey that has been a flashpoint in President Trump’s expanding deportation campaign, calling for an overhaul of the facility.
Criticism over conditions at the detention center, Delaney Hall, grew louder after The New York Times published an article last week that provided the first documented evidence of deficiencies in its medical care and kitchens. Health inspection reports, court filings and other public records illustrated a pattern of problems that have persisted since the Trump administration began using the detention center in Newark to incarcerate immigrants last year, The Times found.
Representative Frank Pallone, a Democrat from New Jersey, wrote a letter urging Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, to “take immediate action” to carry out a comprehensive review of conditions inside Delaney Hall and to share a plan to fix the problems there. The detention center has 1,000 beds and is run by Geo Group, one of the largest private prison operators in the United States, under a 15-year, $1 billion federal contract.
The Department of Homeland Security dismissed concerns about conditions at Delaney Hall and said that politicians were “inciting violent riots” by demonstrators who have gathered for weeks outside the detention center as complaints from detainees have mounted.
“Another day, another hoax about ICE detention facilities,” said Lauren Bis, a Homeland Security Department spokeswoman. “No lawbreakers in the history of human civilization have been better treated than illegal aliens. They are provided three meals a day, medical care and receive full due process.”
Geo Group did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But the company had previously disputed allegations of substandard conditions included in federal and state reports.
The Times reported that federal and state inspectors had identified a litany of unsanitary and dirty conditions, including potato salad that was roughly 40 degrees warmer than what is considered safe and unsanitized food-preparation services.
Mr. Pallone, who along with other Democratic lawmakers had previously called for shutting down Delaney Hall, said that he was frustrated by the federal government’s efforts to block state inspectors who had sought for months to access the detention center’s housing and medical units. On Wednesday, he said he had not heard back from officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or from its parent agency, the Homeland Security Department.
“I think the problem that you have here with ICE and this Geo Group is that they don’t want anybody to know what’s going on, right?” Mr. Pallone said in a phone interview. “If you’re a taxpayer, you want to know that your hard-earned dollars are being used for the right purpose and not for inhumane treatment of people.”
On Facebook, Representative Nellie Pou, a fellow Democrat from New Jersey, said that Geo Group “has been trying to hide the true extent of the inhumane conditions.”
New Jersey’s attorney general, Jennifer Davenport, had sued the federal government to force the center to allow state health inspectors inside so that they could evaluate infection control measures. The suit is pending.
In court filings responding to the lawsuit, the federal government had argued that the inspections are part of “state and local efforts to interfere with or disrupt federal operations and contracts and to harass federal contractors.” The Department of Justice said that New Jersey officials want to inspect Delaney Hall to advance the state’s interest in closing it.
The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey said that it was reviewing the findings in The Times article as it continues to investigate conditions at Delaney Hall.
The criticisms regarding Delaney Hall grew more urgent and emotional after the killings of two men by immigration officials during traffic stops elsewhere in the United States in recent days.
On Monday, religious organizations led a protest of about 100 demonstrators outside Delaney Hall to denounce the deaths of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who was killed in Houston on July 7, and Joan Sebastian Guerrero, who was killed in Biddeford, Maine, on Monday.
Nancy Hiemstra, a professor at Stony Brook University who specializes in the economics of immigration detention facilities, said that because access to Delaney Hall had been tightly restricted, the findings reported by The Times could represent a small fraction of the center’s shortcomings. The federal government’s own oversight agencies had been drastically reduced during the Trump administration, Ms. Hiemstra said.
“That’s probably just the tip of the of the iceberg,” Ms. Hiemstra said. “It’s really hard to get accurate information about what is going on.”
Mark Bonamo contributed reporting.