New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D) on Monday said she was denied access to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Newark amid protests outside the facility and a hunger strike within its walls.
The governor said being denied access to Delaney Hall, the detention center, raised “serious questions about what they are trying to hide from public view.”
“I have long opposed private detention facilities and will continue to advocate for the closure of Delaney Hall and against any expansion of mass detention facilities in New Jersey, like the proposed facility in Roxbury,” Sherrill said in a statement obtained by NewsNation, The Hill’s sister network. “I came today to hear from families and advocates, and what I heard from them was heartbreaking.”
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told The Hill that Sherrill’s visit to Delaney Hall was “nothing more than a political stunt on Memorial Day when visitation is currently suspended due to riots outside in the facility.”
Sherrill was joined by other New Jersey Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Andy Kim and Reps. Rob Menendez Jr., Nellie Pou and LaMonica McIver. The Democrats met with protesters outside the facility following clashes earlier Sunday, when demonstrators said they were pepper-sprayed by ICE officers, WABC reported.
The DHS spokesperson confirmed that Kim was ultimately allowed into the facility after making a call to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin. The spokesperson did not confirm if Sherrill or the other lawmakers were allowed access into the facility.
Mullin denied on social media that detainees were on a hunger strike and said the facility did not have “subprime conditions.” He accused the New Jersey Democrats of “smearing ICE law enforcement.”
Protesters have gathered outside the facility since Friday, when organizer Gabriela Soto arrived at the detention center at the start of a hunger and work strike led by detainees, the New York City-based outlet The City reported. Around 300 detainees set up the strike in protest of the facility’s conditions, calling for the release of older and younger detainees, as well as those with health concerns.
Soto told The City that her husband, who has been detained since February, was locked in a cell for eight hours while officers questioned him.
“The people inside Delaney Hall are fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, and members of our community,” she said. “In New Jersey, we believe in the rule of law and that everyone deserves to be treated with basic dignity. We have a duty to safeguard the rights, health, and well-being of everyone within our borders.”
The DHS spokesperson told The Hill that around 125 demonstrators, “many carrying anti-ICE signs and Antifa flags… formed a human chain around entrances to the facility and set up barricades, blocking all entries and exits.”
Lawmakers with Sherrill similarly slammed the detention center’s conditions, having arrived on Sunday night to conduct an unannounced oversight visit. Menendez said he was denied access too.
“I was told that I would be able to go inside at 8 a.m., but ICE continues to deny entry,” he wrote on social platform X Monday morning.
Pou, Kim and McIver, who each shared photos on X of them meeting with protesters, called for the facility to be shut down.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said earlier on Sunday that he would also go to the detention center.
“Immigrants at Delaney Hall are on a hunger strike because they are fighting for their human rights,” he wrote on X. “The conditions there are deplorable… Enough is enough — not in New Jersey, not anywhere.”
The DHS spokesperson defended the facility’s conditions, saying all detainees are provided with three meals each day, clean water, clothes, bedding and toiletries, and that ICE “has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens.”
