This article is part of “In broad daylight,” an MS NOW series exploring the stories of people whose lives have been endangered, upended or cut short by Trump’s brutal immigration agenda.
Three weeks ago, I returned to the bare corridors of Delaney Hall detention center in Newark, New Jersey, and sat down with several men who were being detained there. Many had been ripped from their lives and families by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents deployed by the Trump administration with no real explanation and no prior criminal charges. Several had spouses who were American citizens and children waiting for them outside. Several reported serious medical problems that were not being addressed.
I’m constantly reminded of something one of the people being detained said to me during an earlier visit a few months back: “We shouldn’t be in here. We didn’t do anything wrong.”
The cruelty and conditions inside Delaney Hall are abhorrent, but the story doesn’t end there. After numerous visits to the detention center, it’s clear that the poor conditions are not a defect, or mere signs of a facility in need of upgrades. Delaney Hall is working exactly how it is intended to — as a purgatory to indefinitely hold detainees in poor and often dangerous conditions, with no progress in court, until their spirits break and they agree to self-deport.
Delaney Hall also helps fuel a cycle that takes taxpayer dollars and puts them into the pockets of for-profit companies and executives who support President Donald Trump’s agenda and administration.
This is what a profiteering mass deportation campaign requires: beds filled fast, corners cut, human beings warehoused. Some individuals are even intentionally transferred to faraway locations, further away from family and legal counsel.
Clean drinking water should be a basic human right for all in this country. In Delaney Hall, it’s only for those who can afford it.
For those inside and their loved ones outside, there is a palpable fear that declining health at the facility can become a matter of life or death. Their concern is valid. In the span of nine months, the families of Jean Wilson Brutus, Jose Chajon-Raxon and Edwin Jovanny Lopez-Cornejo have lived the nightmare of losing a loved one to Delaney Hall.
And to help carry out this campaign of horror, ICE is paying the private company GEO Group upward of $1 billion of taxpayer money to run Delaney Hall.
The union between the Trump administration and for-profit prison behemoths like GEO Group is a perfect storm in that the former is all about cruelty and the latter is all about profit, about keeping as much of its lucrative contract for itself at the expense of those being detained. That is why medical care is limited, why food is of such poor quality, why the water is undrinkable and why the showers often run cold.
Despite these well-documented conditions, the facility and the Department of Homeland Security deny the reports. Smelly, wretched-tasting water has reportedly been an issue for months inside Delaney Hall. I tasted the metallic water myself when I took a sip from a water fountain on one of the detention floors. GEO Group has the money, and many would say an obligation, to make sure every person inside has clean drinking water. The company has started to sell bottled water in its commissary store, at a price unaffordable for many, if not most, detainees. Clean drinking water should be a basic human right for all in this country. In Delaney Hall, it’s only for those who can afford it.
Detainees previously showed me a court docket that had 74 individual cases before just one judge in a day, which would average out to about 5 minutes a case. This is a farce of a process; but again, that’s the point.
Like most conversations around corruption, you can find the rot if you follow the money. ICE contracts make up a significant portion of GEO Group’s revenue. GEO Group donated $500,000 to Trump’s 2025 inaugural committee and the GEO Group PAC, the company’s employee-funded political action committee, has contributed at least $1 million to a pro-Trump super PAC, MAGA Inc. In June, David Venturella, GEO Group’s former senior vice president, was appointed as acting director of ICE, placing him in a unique position to support contracts awarded to the company that contributed to his own wealth.
This is what a profiteering mass deportation campaign requires: beds filled fast, corners cut, human beings warehoused.
We are witnessing blatant disregard for human welfare, seemingly all to enrich Trump’s corporate allies and sustain an inhumane agenda.
GEO Group seemingly does not care about a woman I met who told me of her miscarriage while being detained in Delaney Hall — a miscarriage she attributed to the conditions inside the detention center. Nor does it seem to care about the families grieving loved ones who have passed away — families who have shared that they were not even contacted by ICE or GEO Group officials after the untimely deaths. They’re there to make a profit for as long as Republicans are willing to use taxpayer dollars to pay for it.
GEO Group and the Trump administration right now are making a choice: to gain by making others suffer. But it is not their choice to make.
We’ve seen public pressure and scrutiny curb ICE tactics before. We need to keep the pressure up to close Delaney Hall for good and stop companies from profiteering from human misery.
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