The government promised negotiations with striking detainees. It sent batons instead.

"My nephew can't see right now because he was hit on the head with a baton."

— A detainee's aunt, speaking to The Intercept about retaliation at Delaney Hall

The hunger strike at Delaney Hall began the way most protests inside American prisons do: quietly, desperately, without any expectation of being heard. Detainees at the 1,000-bed immigration jail in Newark, New Jersey stopped eating and refused to work over Memorial Day weekend, citing conditions that bordered on medieval. Scalding showers hot enough to cause burns and blisters. Worms found in food trays. Medical care denied to people with serious conditions. Family visitation shut down entirely.

Then guards attacked them.

According to relatives of detainees and members of Congress who visited the facility this week, staff at Delaney Hall responded to the nonviolent strike with pepper spray and batons. One woman told The Intercept her nephew was promised negotiations by prison operators on Thursday. Instead, he said, the guards came in swinging. He cannot see from one eye after being struck on the head.

Translation: when people held without trial for a crime that is not a crime try to exercise the most basic form of protest available to them, the system answers with violence.

Delaney Hall is operated by GEO Group, one of two private prison giants that dominate federal immigration detention. The company's spokesperson, Christopher Ferreira, confirmed chemical agents were used on Thursday during what he called a "physical altercation involving detainees." He did not address the allegations of retaliation against hunger strikers who had been promised talks.

ICE referred questions to its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, which did not respond. DHS has publicly denied any hunger strike is taking place, according to Ana Paola Pazmino, director of Resistencia en Acción NJ. "They are liars," she said.

Members of Congress from New Jersey and New York visited Delaney Hall this week and emerged shaken. Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., told The Intercept that detainees reported scalding showers causing burns, worms in food, denied medical care, and no access to the outdoors. He said many believed the abuse was retribution for the hunger strike.

Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., said he was barred from visiting the unit where the physical abuses were alleged. He spoke with detainees on another unit who reported fellows being taken to the hospital for injuries sustained in guard attacks. Pallone's conclusion was blunt: "This place needs to be closed down."

The retaliation at Delaney Hall is not an anomaly. It is a documented pattern. The ACLU published a 2021 report detailing systematic abuse against hunger strikers at dozens of facilities across 24 states. Force-feeding, isolation, denial of medical care, physical assault by guards. The public has only seen one video of the government force-feeding someone in immigration detention because it was the first time anyone managed to record it.

What makes Delaney different is the scale of attention. A detainee leader's wife called on local organizations for solidarity demonstrations. Protesters showed up outside the facility starting May 21 and have been there virtually around the clock since, despite repeated attacks by armed ICE agents, Newark police, and New Jersey state troopers.

The violence outside has been as severe as what is reported inside. ICE agents in full tactical gear have swung batons at demonstrators and doused them with pepper spray. When local and state police arrived to secure the area, they fired tear gas indiscriminately. An Associated Press photographer suffered a severe leg injury. Dozens of protesters were arrested after Newark's mayor declared a curfew and police kettled people in place, preventing them from leaving.

"If ICE agents are willing to storm into a crowd and brutalize people on camera and in front of the press," said Andre Beresford Burger, an organizer with Movimiento Cosecha who was pepper-sprayed at the protest, "what does this say about what they're doing to people inside immigration detention, away from the cameras?"

To understand why Delaney Hall matters beyond Newark, you need to understand the scale of what the Trump administration has built. Since taking office, detention capacity expanded by 75 percent, rising from approximately 40,000 people held in January 2025 to over 73,000 by January 2026. The American Immigration Council estimates ICE now has nearly $15 billion per year for immigration detention through the end of fiscal year 2029.

Eighteen people have died in ICE detention this calendar year alone, an unprecedented number. Andrea Sáenz, a former federal appellate immigration judge fired by the Trump administration last year, called them "preventable deaths."

The administration has simultaneously dismantled virtually every accountability mechanism that existed for the detention system. The Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties inside DHS was gutted within the first month. The Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman was shut down entirely, despite a congressional mandate requiring it to remain in existence. Members of Congress have been restricted from visiting facilities. State health officials in New Jersey were denied inspection access, prompting the state to file a lawsuit.

The government is also spending billions converting warehouses into detention centers without basic plans for water, sanitation, or trash removal. Earthjustice has filed lawsuits alleging these conversions violate federal law. Delaney Hall itself was repurposed from its previous use and is now the largest immigration detention facility on the East Coast.

The legal architecture supporting this expansion is equally alarming. The Trump administration adopted the position that anyone who ever entered the United States across the southern border is permanently barred from seeking release on bond, even if they have lived here for decades with no criminal record. Asylum grant rates have dropped to less than 10 percent of cases, down from 30 to 40 percent previously.

New policies like "mega master calendar hearings" schedule 100 people for a single hearing with as little as 72 hours notice. Miss the hearing and you are ordered deported immediately, regardless of whether you have legal representation. The administration is firing judges who grant asylum or bond at rates deemed too high by political leadership.

Andrea Sáenz described the transformation: "It's no longer independent. You have leadership watching which judges grant asylum too much, which judges grant bond too much. It destroys any idea that judges are being allowed to apply the law independently."

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council put it more concisely: the system is being turned into "an assembly line for deportations" in which basic legal rights are tossed aside and procedures may be followed to the letter while clearly violating the spirit.

Polling shows nearly two-thirds of Americans believe ICE has gone too far in its immigration crackdown. Yet Congress continues funding the expansion. The midterms loom, and immigration detention remains one of the least scrutinized aspects of federal law enforcement despite holding more people than many states' entire prison populations.

At Delaney Hall, detainees can still be seen in windows raising their fists. Lights flicker periodically, a signal from those inside that they hear their supporters on the outside. Family members have been denied visitation for nearly a week. Protesters set up tents where families once gathered to see their loved ones through glass and steel.

The government promised negotiations with people who stopped eating to demand basic human conditions. It sent batons instead. The question is not whether anyone inside Delaney Hall deserves better treatment. The question is why it took a hunger strike, a baton to the head, and members of Congress knocking on locked doors before anyone in power decided to care.