‘It’s like they’re kidnapped there’: families tell of distress over ‘inhumane’ ICE jail

In mid-May, Elder Guerra was showering inside the Delaney Hall immigration detention facility when he slipped and fell.

Guerra, a Guatemalan immigrant, has been locked up in the New Jersey jail for nearly five months. He was arrested by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials in Newark in January while helping a friend move his snowed-in car. Officers had approached and asked a few questions, according to a relative who spoke with the Guardian.

Guerra has been in the US for eight years and is now fighting his deportation case while inside the detention center, where some of those detained have been on a hunger and labor strike to protest conditions, and which has been the scene of fierce protests for the last two weeks.

Guerra’s fall was a bad one. He slammed the back of his skull against the floor and was knocked unconscious, and began having a seizure, according to the relative who received accounts from other detainees.

Others detained in the unit were reportedly alarmed and pleaded with guards to call an ambulance. After much begging by other detainees, Guerra was taken to a hospital. He was transferred back into Delaney Hall that same week and placed in a medical isolation cell.

“It’s been almost three weeks and he’s getting worse,” Guerra’s relative told the Guardian, requesting anonymity for fear of retaliation by ICE. “His head hurts. When he looks at the light, it bothers him, he gets fatigued. When he looks at a television screen, he feels dizzy. When he stands up and wants to walk, he gets dizzy.”

“He needs medical attention. He’s not in an adequate place to recover,” the relative said, adding that Guerra is beginning to lose his hearing in his left ear.

Guerra is one of two men held inside medical isolation cells inside Delaney, according to New Jersey congressional representative LaMonica McIver. A third man detained in that unit, who uses a wheelchair, was released on Thursday afternoon.

The Delaney Hall facility, run by the private prison company GEO Group, opened last year and has faced repeated accusations of substandard medical care, inedible food and neglectful guards. Multiple oversight visits by members of congress have found conditions at the facility to match claims by detainees, according to the lawmakers’ accounts.

Amid the hunger and labor strike inside and demonstrations outside, government officials – first ICE officers and then New Jersey state police and Newark police – have responded by pepper spraying, tasing, beating, deploying tear gas and arresting dozens of protesters.

Families of immigrants detained inside Delaney Hall have had to navigate on-again, off-again visitation permission and chaos to visit their loves ones. Some told the Guardian how upset, angry and worried they are about their relatives, hoping they will be released soon to continue their immigration cases.

Guerra’s relative has visited him since his fall and spoke about it through tears.

“He kept telling me, ‘Help me. I need to leave here,’” the relative said. “But I told him, ‘I can’t do anything, because it’s not in my hands.’ I’m trying to pay for an attorney for them to do something.”

He recalled touching his loved one’s neck and feeling the heat from a fever he was experiencing.

Now, back on the outside, Guerra’s relative is having trouble focusing on anything other than fretting about his detained family member.

“After the accident, what makes me saddest is what’s happening to the Hispanic community in this country,” he added. “They’re treating us like animals, like we’re not worth anything. We’re not criminals, we’re workers, we’re struggling to get out ahead.”

Last Tuesday, under blazing early June sunshine and surrounded by state police barricades, protesters and reporters, Christopher Castro and his mother arrived at Delaney Hall for their first visit in weeks. They had driven nearly three hours from their home town on Long Island to the east of New York City for a 30-minute visit with Christopher’s father.

“My dad told me that a lot of people inside are pushing their lawyers to get them out,” Castro said after the visit. Their loved one inside was not participating in the strike for fear of retaliation. “It’s been crazy. I hope they all get released and we can work on this [immigration case] on the outside.”

Relatives came and went during the afternoon. One mother and daughter cried as they walked to their car after visiting a relative. Another woman and a young boy with neatly slicked hair and a polo shirt watched while they waited their own turn to enter the large, grim-looking, barbed-wired facility, the boy holding the woman’s hand in silence.

On Tuesday night, detained immigrants inside Delaney Hall released a fourth public letter since the strike began, dated 31 May, repeating their claims about conditions inside.

“The conditions in this prison are not fit for human beings over such a long period of time: medical neglect, water unfit for consumption, food that is past its expiration date and in poor condition, bathrooms that are unusable, and ventilation systems that have never been maintained and because of this, we are constantly sick,” the latest letter reads. “We demand freedom, a fair trial, and for our rights to be respected.”

The first three letters released by striking detainees also listed a series of demands: a meeting with New Jersey’s governor, Mikie Sherrill, who has come under fire from protesters; the release of sick and elderly detainees; for immigration cases to proceed more quickly; and for immigration officials to stop pressuring them to sign documents agreeing to be deported.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not respond to detailed requests for comment.

Meanwhile, amid national attention on Delaney Hall, DHS officials have repeatedly claimed that people they arrest are “criminals” and the “worst of the worst”. But a recent data review of ICE’s own data by Austin Kocher, an assistant research professor at Syracuse University and an immigration data and policy expert, found that claims by DHS are wildly overstated.

According to the latest data from mid-March, 88% of immigrants detained in Delaney Hall at the time had no criminal conviction and just over 70% had no criminal history whatsoever. And the majority of those with criminal convictions were charged with low-level offenses, Kocher reports.

Despite most alleged immigration violations involving civil not criminal law, the second Trump administration has detained record numbers of people, deporting many, including people whose US papers were no longer accepted.

The largest private prison operator in the US, GEO Group, operates Delaney Hall and currently has a one-billion dollar contract to run it for 15 years.

“The food is not that good, the bathrooms are dirty,” said Maria Santos, whose husband is detained inside. Santos was also allowed to visit him on Tuesday afternoon.

The hunger and labor strike began on 22 May. Santos’s husband, she told the Guardian, has not participated in the strike out of fear of retaliation by GEO Group guards and ICE officials. “We don’t know if they can take it [out] against them or something,” she said.

The striking detainees have already accused DHS and GEO Group officials of retaliation.

“Since the strike began, we have been subjected to reprisals, discrimination, mockery, mistreatment, and threats, mainly from ‘GEO’ [Group] staff,” the latest letter reads. “They constantly threaten to deport us, transfer us to punishment units, and move us from one detention center to another; they take photos of us in the dormitories without our consent and tell us that we have no rights here.”

“GEO strongly refutes these allegations,” a company spokesperson said, in response to a request for comment. “The support services GEO provides include around-the-clock access to medical care, in-person and virtual legal and family visitation, general and legal library access, translation services, dietician-approved meals, religious and specialty diets, recreational amenities, and opportunities to practice their religious beliefs.”

GEO Group referred all questions about Guerra’s case to the DHS.

Gabriela Soto, whose husband Martin was detained in Delaney and participated in the strike has helped organize protests outside the facility.

“Once I started going to the visits and started seeing these people tell their stories, it made me so angry that they don’t have a voice,” Soto told the Guardian, the anger in her voice palpable. “What really boiled me over was the fact that they got served worms for food. It got me so pissed that I needed to do something. We needed their voices to be heard, which is why the protest started in the first place.”

Martin Soto was arrested by ICE in early February when getting diapers for their child.

“The conditions in there are horrible. The food stinks. It is expired, it is chunky. They just got served worms, crawling on their plates. You don’t even give an animal worms,” Soto added.

The DHS has repeatedly denied allegations about conditions related to Delaney Hall and denied that there are any “sub-prime” conditions to be found there – as they have denied similar allegations about other ICE detention facilities.

On 24 May, lawmakers and Sherrill arrived at the facility for an oversight visit. When Soto and others attempted to prevent Martin Soto’s transfer, ICE officers pepper-sprayed the protesters, including US senator Andy Kim. Martin Soto was transferred to another ICE detention center, but the ordeal drew more protesters to Delaney Hall.

Meanwhile, Guerra’s relative has not visited him since the strike began, nor since family visitation was reintroduced last Sunday. Facility officials and police on Tuesday were asking relatives to provide their full names for visitation, making Guerra’s relative nervous the information would be shared with ICE.

“What he told me made me very sad,” the relative said when describing the earlier visit after Guerra’s fall. “Because they [detainees inside Delaney Hall] can’t do anything – it’s like they’re kidnapped there. We, their family members, we want to do something but we can’t, it’s not in our hands.”

“What is happening is inhumane, it makes me feel sorry to see so many people there,” he added. “They [officials] should have mercy, they’re human beings.”