Detainees at an ICE facility in Newark went on hunger strike to protest horrific conditions, then were told negotiations would begin. Instead, guards hit them with batons and pepper spray.

"My nephew can't see right now because he was hit on the head with a baton. Prison operators told my nephew and the others on the hunger strike that ICE was going to negotiate on Thursday. They got hit instead."

— Anonymous relative of a detainee at Delaney Hall, speaking to The Intercept

The Delaney Hall Detention Facility in Newark, New Jersey is operated by GEO Group, one of the two largest private prison corporations in the United States. In late May 2026, detainees inside went on hunger and labor strike. They refused food and stopped showing up for their assigned work. Their demands were basic: release elderly detainees, release those with serious medical conditions, and improve living conditions that included scalding showers causing burns and blisters, food infested with worms, and no doctor on site.

ICE told the public there was no hunger strike happening. The detainees had other evidence.

On Thursday, May 29, guards attacked inmates with pepper spray and batons during what had been presented as a negotiation session. One detainee lost vision in an eye after being struck on the head. Several were taken to the hospital. Protest leaders were transferred to other facilities. Family visitation was shut down entirely.

Translation: when people who have committed no serious crimes refuse to be mistreated, the response is physical violence and isolation.

Members of Congress from New Jersey and New York visited Delaney Hall during the week and came out shaken. New York Rep. Dan Goldman reported that detainees described being denied medical care, visitation rights, and time outdoors. He said many believed the abuse was retribution for the hunger strike itself.

Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., said he was barred from visiting the unit where the physical attacks occurred but spoke with detainees on another wing who reported their fellows being hospitalized after guard assaults. In a video posted after his visit, Pallone called for the facility to be closed entirely. "This place needs to be shut down," he said. "The reality is that ICE and DHS are trying to ship people out that are trying to tell the stories."

GEO Group's spokesperson, Christopher Ferreira, confirmed the use of chemical agents against detainees on Thursday. He called it a "physical altercation" and said staff followed "established policies and protocols approved by ICE." He denied reports of poor conditions, dismissing them as a "coordinated, politically motivated campaign by outside groups to dismantle ICE and federal immigration detention."

Outside the facility, protests had been running around the clock since May 21, organized in response to a call from one detainee leader's wife. ICE agents repeatedly attacked demonstrators with batons and pepper spray, including family members of those locked inside. Long standoffs were punctuated by bursts of violence directed at people standing on public sidewalks.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has separately documented that DHS recruitment materials use imagery and language overlapping with white nationalist subcultures. A Colorado fusion center warned in March that ICE's social media posts could create "a permissive environment to engage in vigilante action and/or violence against individuals perceived to be immigrants." The federal government's own counterterrorism analysts flagged the problem.

The violence at Delaney Hall is not an isolated incident. It sits inside a well-documented pattern of abuse, retaliation, and evidence destruction across ICE detention facilities nationwide.

On May 24, The Intercept reported what appears to be the first-ever judicial sanction against a private prison corporation for destroying video evidence in a wrongful death lawsuit. CoreCivic, the other major private prison operator alongside GEO Group, had destroyed footage from 14 of 15 cameras on the day that Kesley Vial, a 23-year-old Brazilian asylum-seeker, attempted suicide at the Torrance County Detention Facility in New Mexico. He died seven days later.

The company's own investigator had produced a report with 49 still images from video footage, claiming they showed CoreCivic bore no responsibility for Vial's death. But when attorneys demanded the actual underlying video for 37 of those images, it was gone. Overwritten. The footage would have shown Vial crying so hard he could barely walk, punching walls, collapsing to the floor. Instead, the family got a timeline written by the company whose facility killed him.

Judge Francis J. Mathew issued an adverse inference sanction, meaning a jury would be instructed to presume the missing evidence was unfavorable to CoreCivic. Within weeks, the company settled for an undisclosed amount. The trial never happened.

The legal team's attorney, Rebecca Sheff of ACLU New Mexico, put it plainly: "CoreCivic is essentially used to getting away with it. To not getting called on it."

As of May 1, 2026, eighteen detainees had died in ICE custody this year alone, according to CBS News tracking. The number was on track to reach a record high. CoreCivic received $2.2 billion in revenue last year, up from $2 billion the year before. GEO Group's profits grew alongside its.

Jeremy Jong, an immigration attorney with Al Otro Lado, described what families face when they try to pursue justice: "They begin thinking, 'We want justice.' Years later, it's more like, 'We just want to give up.'" Even when private prison firms are forced to pay out settlements, the sums are small relative to government contracts. The payouts become operating expenses rather than deterrents.

The American Civil Liberties Union published a 2021 report documenting systematic retaliation against hunger strikers at dozens of facilities across 24 states. Nothing has changed in five years. If anything, it has gotten worse.

Detainees at Delaney Hall could be seen through windows raising their fists and flickering lights to signal that they heard their supporters outside. Family members had been denied visitation for nearly a week. Protesters set up tents on the sidewalk because there was nowhere else to go.

The question is not whether ICE detention facilities are places of abuse. The evidence is stacked high enough to build another one. The question is why an agency that uses white supremacist recruitment language, contracts with corporations that destroy evidence when people die in their custody, and retaliates against nonviolent hunger strikers with batons is still operating as if nothing is wrong.

At Delaney Hall, the detainees who refused food were promised negotiations. They got pepper spray instead. That is not a policy failure. That is the policy working exactly as designed.