Newark mayor says city will sue on health grounds in effort to shutter Delaney Hall ICE detention center
Mayor Ras Baraka said the suit would be based on safety grounds, after New Jersey health officials were denied full access to the center.
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka said Tuesday that the city would expand its lawsuit against the company that runs Delaney Hall, seeking to shutter the ICE detention center that’s been the site of violent protests over living conditions there.
The suit would be based on health and safety grounds, he said, noting that the New Jersey Department of Health was denied full access when it sought to conduct a health inspection of the facility late last month. Instead the agency was allowed to review only a limited part of the 1,000-bed facility.
“We believe they should be shut down, because we have actually, irrefutable evidence that this place is uninhabitable,” the mayor said on CNN.
The city of Newark has for the last year pursued the closure of Delaney Hall in court, saying in a lawsuit against the company that runs the facility that the operators have violated city codes. The new filing adds to those claims.
Delaney Hall is among hundreds of ICE detention centers across the United States, places where immigrants who have been arrested are processed for deportation. It is managed by the GEO Group, a private-prison firm, under a 15-year, $1 billion federal contract awarded last year.
Protesters have gathered outside the facility, with most in support of immigrant detainees and some there for ICE, amid reports of inhumane conditions and a hunger strike inside the facility. Federal officials insist that no hunger strike has occurred, and that detainees are held in safe and humane conditions.
The mayor imposed an indefinite curfew outside the center after a series of clashes between demonstrators and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, who were recently supplanted by state police. Baraka closed roughly a half mile around Delaney Hall from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
