05/26/2026
For the past four days -- while much of the country enjoyed a holiday weekend -- roughly 300 people locked inside Delaney Hall have refused to eat. They are on hunger strike inside the for-profit ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey -- protesting spoiled food, foul water, medical care a visiting senator called inhumane, and guards they say are abusive. They are demanding an investigation into the facility and, ultimately, their release. The conditions inside are so dire that when New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill arrived today to see them for herself, ICE refused to let her through the gate.
"The people being held there are fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters who deserve to be treated with dignity," Governor Sherrill said. "My request to access the facility was denied this morning, raising even more questions about what they are trying to hide from public view."
Weeks before the strike, a letter signed by nearly 300 detainees was smuggled out of Delaney Hall -- detailing exactly what ICE would not let her inside to see. The prisoners wrote that they felt "kidnapped, detained without justification," and that they were being "tortured physically and psychologically" by the conditions inside -- food unfit to eat, water unfit to drink, prescription medications withheld. It was the second such letter to make it past the walls. The ACLU of New Jersey has documented the same: people "regularly denied treatment for significant health issues" and left without medication for chronic conditions.
Rep. LaMonica McIver, who toured the facility two days before the hunger strike began, said they were "conditions any of us would recognize as torture."
During today's rally, detainees pressed against the windows and flicked the lights on and off, signaling to the families gathered below. One of those families was Gabriela Soto's. Her husband was detained four months ago, on his way to pick up diapers for their children. She is a mother of two, pregnant with a third, and has been a U.S. citizen for twenty years. "He missed my daughter's fourth birthday," she said. "He missed our son's first birthday. He missed my son's first steps." She said he has found worms in his food. "I'm fed up with my husband being treated like an animal."
New Jersey Senator Andy Kim rushed to Delaney Hall when he heard about the hunger strike, and recounted what he saw. An 18-year-old high school student, crying, who said she just wanted to graduate her senior year. A pregnant woman unable to get full prenatal care. A woman who had miscarried inside the facility and was left to manage it alone. A mother allowed only a few minutes with her four-month-old baby. A carton of milk congealed solid, its expiration date the next day. People who had been following all the laws, arrested at their scheduled green card interviews. A man from South America who ICE was attempting to deport to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where an Ebola outbreak is active. A court docket for the following Tuesday showing 74 cases before a single judge in one day -- about five minutes each.
"Treat humans as human," Kim wrote.
This afternoon, as the hunger strike continued and protesters rallied outside, ICE responded with force. Agents threatened to transfer more than 100 of the strikers to facilities in Louisiana and Texas, far from their families and lawyers, and among the most notorious in the country. They brought in an armored vehicle mounted with a gun and pointed it at the crowd. They fired rubber bullets and pepper spray. Senator Kim, who had stepped between the agents and the protesters with his arms raised, trying to de-escalate the tense situation, was caught in it. "It's just burning," he said afterward, describing his lungs.
The Trump administration's response to the hunger strike and protest was to peddle the same lies they have been repeating for months. "These sanctuary politicians should be thanking ICE law enforcement for removing murderers, rapists, pedophiles and drug traffickers from their communities," said DHS Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis. The administration's vapid "worst of the worst" talking point.
ICE's own data exposes it as a fraud. As of April 4, of the 60,311 people held in ICE detention, 70.8% have no criminal conviction at all. According to ICE's own internal figures, leaked to the Cato Institute -- a libertarian think tank -- just 5% of those in custody had a violent criminal conviction. As for the rest with records, most were convicted of traffic violations, immigration offenses, or other low-level crimes.
Arrests of people with no criminal record at all have surged 2,450% in Trump's first year, driven by roving patrols, worksite raids, and re-arrests of people who showed up to their own court hearings. Many were doing "everything right" -- they had open asylum cases, attended every check-in, kept every appointment, filed every form. None of it mattered to the Trump administration.
The hunger strike, the smuggled letters, the bodies pressed against the windows -- all of it is happening inside a facility that exists to make money by imprisoning people, the vast majority of whom have never been convicted of any crime. The GEO Group, one of the largest private prison companies in the country and a major donor to Trump's campaign and other Republican candidates, holds a 15-year contract worth roughly a billion dollars to operate a facility where the food is rotten, the water is foul, and the prisoners are paid about a dollar a day to help keep it running.
"Spending tens of billions of dollars from American families to perpetrate cruelty against people who aren't violent criminals or felons is a waste of money and wrong," Kim said. "No profiting off of human misery."
As of tonight, the people inside Delaney Hall are still refusing to eat.
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These courageous hunger strikers need your support and solidarity. Here's how to help:
--> The coalition behind the strike -- including the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice and Eyes on ICE -- is demanding an independent investigation of Delaney Hall, the immediate release of detainees who are elderly, ill, or vulnerable, and the facility's closure. To support their work, visit njaij.org
--> Eyes on ICE NJ, a grassroots network of community members, has kept watch outside Delaney Hall every day for the past year, supporting the detainees and their families. On their page, you can help those families directly -- with grocery and gift cards, commissary funds so detainees can call home, food donations, and one heartbreaking GoFundMe after another at https://linktr.ee/SupportOurFamilies
--> To support detention visitation, bond, and direct aid for people held at Delaney Hall and other facilities, visit First Friends of NJ & NY at https://firstfriendsnjny.org/
--> Call your Senators and Representatives at (202) 224-3121 and demand due process for the tens of thousands of immigrants who are being detained without criminal charges
--> To read more about Governor Sherrill being blocked by ICE today in the New York Times, visit https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/25/nyregion/sherrill-ice-delaney-hunger-strike.html?unlocked_article_code=1.lVA.Um7T.Wv_3yDqyUrwk&smid=url-share
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For books for children and teens about the importance of standing up for truth, decency, and justice, even in dark times, visit our blog post, "Dissent Is Patriotic: 50 Books About Women Who Fought for Change," at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=14364
For books for tweens and teens about girls living under real-life authoritarian regimes throughout history that will help them appreciate how precious democracy truly is, visit our blog post "The Fragility of Freedom: Mighty Girl Books About Life Under Authoritarianism" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=32426
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