Dozens of law enforcement officials from several policing agencies responded Thursday to a private immigration detention center in Newark, New Jersey, after reports of a disturbance inside.

Masked officers carrying plastic handcuffs and pepper spray could be seen entering the facility, known as Delaney Hall, just after 7 p.m., and people standing nearby reported smelling a pungent odor.

About an hour beforehand, a detainee at the facility had called a staff member of an emergency immigration hotline and said that a group had begun to rebel over dismal food conditions, according to Ellen Whitt, a volunteer who works at the hotline run by DIRE.

“People were hungry and got very angry and started to react and started to rebel against what was going on in the detention center,” Whitt said. “When we were on the phone with him, we could hear screaming and yelling in the background.”

The detainee said that people were trying to break windows and that, at one point, guards seemed to have abandoned their posts.

Private Prison Company Operates Facility Under Trump Contract

Delaney Hall is run by one of the country’s largest private prison companies, the GEO Group, which has a contract with the Trump administration to hold as many as 1,000 migrants at a time. Last month, a clash outside the facility led the Justice Department to charge Rep. LaMonica McIver, D-N.J., with assault. McIver, who has maintained her innocence, is scheduled to be arraigned Monday and has said that she will enter a not guilty plea.

A spokesperson for the GEO Group referred questions to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said she was in touch with officials at the facility but was not able to offer an immediate comment.

Relatives with scheduled appointments Thursday to visit detainees in Unit 4 of the facility said that they had not been permitted inside. Many were still waiting out front when a firetruck and then police vehicles from several agencies, including the Newark Police Department and the Essex County Sheriff Department, pulled up.

“They weren’t letting visitors in,” said Raymond O’Neill, a Newark resident, who has joined regularly with other activists outside the facility, which has become a recurring flashpoint in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Protesters Clash With Authorities Outside Detention Center

After the sun set, a K9 unit and agents with the FBI, as well as officers from the Hudson County Sheriff’s Office, began arriving as protesters stood in front of the facility’s gate, as if to block entry or exit by authorities.

Just before 10 p.m., some members of the crowd dragged plastic construction barricades toward the gate. Soon after, groups of protesters began linking arms, blocking a van and an SUV from exiting through the gate. The vehicles left after the crowd was dispersed by officers who used pepper spray.

ICE entered into a $1 billion contract with the GEO Group to operate the facility, which began housing detainees last month. Democratic officials in New Jersey have opposed its opening, leading to a lawsuit, protests and a volatile clash outside the facility that led to the arrest of Newark’s mayor and charges against McIver.

In recent days, reports about unsanitary conditions inside began to percolate among immigration lawyers and activists.

Detainees Report Overcrowding and Poor Food Conditions

Francisco Castillo, a Dominican immigrant who has been held at Delaney Hall since last week, said in a phone interview from the detention center Tuesday that the facility was so overcrowded when he arrived that some detainees had to sleep on the floor. He said Tuesday that the crowding issue had been recently resolved.

But he said detainees were being served dismal meals at irregular hours, an issue that was particularly affecting detainees who are diabetic and need to eat at regular times to control their blood sugar levels. He said detainees were often served small cartons of expired milk for breakfast. Dinners were sometimes not served until around 11 p.m., he said.

The living conditions grew so bad, he said, that a group of about 30 detainees had begun drafting a petition detailing the conditions that they could get to the public through their relatives and lawyers.

“Every day is a disaster with the food here,” Castillo, 36, who was detained by ICE at an immigration courthouse in New York City on June 4, said in Spanish.

About 4:30 p.m. Thursday, a woman who lives in Elizabeth, New Jersey, said she got a call from her partner, who has been detained at Delaney Hall since early last month. He was crying, she said, and described rising tension within the facility linked to frustration over food.

He had arrived in the country at 15 from Guatemala, she said, and is challenging an order of deportation.

The woman, who did not want to be identified because she feared it would lead to retaliation against her partner, said she told him to close the door to the 10-bunk dorm room where he is housed, and to kneel on the floor to avoid a conflict if officers entered.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Tracey Tully, Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Mark Bonamo/Victor J. Blue
c. 2025 The New York Times Company