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Newark, New Jersey facility begins housing detained migrants, prompting outrage from officials

Pushback grows over reopening of Newark detention center to house migrants
Pushback grows over reopening of Newark detention center to house migrants 02:40

Officials are pushing back after a Newark, New Jersey detention facility began quietly housing migrants.

Mayor Ras Baraka and immigration rights leaders say the operation of the facility as a detention center is dangerous and illegal.

Delaney Hall begins housing migrants

Delaney Hall had been operating as a halfway house for the last few years, before U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced plans to turn it into a detention facility for immigrants in February. 

The facility and ICE signed a 15-year, $60 million contract with the private prison company, Geo Group. Mayor Baraka says it began to quietly detain migrants at the facility on May 1.

"We got word last year that they had plans to reopen Delaney Hall. Since then, it's been a fight to ensure we're doing everything we can here as an organization as a coalition in New Jersey to stop ICE from expanding detention in New Jersey," said Dante Apaestegui, community response coordinator for the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice.  

According to city officials, the company skipped critical legal steps, such as getting a certificate of occupancy, and blocking inspectors from evaluating fire alarms, electrical systems and plumbing.

"While we were going back and forth in court, handing over documents to one another, they began putting people, detainees, inside the building," Baraka said.

Delaney Hall is a 1,000-bed facility around 15 to 20 minutes from Newark Liberty International Airport. It is the first migrant detention center that has been opened under the new Trump administration.

"This is blatant disregard for the courts, blatant disregard for laws," Baraka said. "Violations that put first responders at risk. Violations that put detainees or workers that are there at risk. If there is something that happens in the building and we respond to it, it puts us all at risk immediately." 

Baraka said Newark fire inspectors are being denied entry to the building. 

"Their contention is that they are going off an old certificate of occupancy from 2007. We are saying that that is not valid. In fact, they're saying that they're not doing anything different than they were in 2007, but we won't know this unless we actually have access to the building, to the facilities, to see what's going on, which they refuse to allow us to do," Baraka added. "The transparency is completely gone. We don't know what's going on in there. We don't know how many people they have in there."

"The location near an international airport streamlines logistics and helps facilitate the timely processing of individuals in our custody," former Acting ICE Director Caleb Vitello said in a statement when the opening was announced.

CBS News New York reached out to the Geo Group, but it didn't answer about who is detained or how many people. However, it did say it does have valid permits and added, this "is another unfortunate example of a politicized campaign by sanctuary city and open borders politicians in New Jersey to interfere with the federal government's efforts to arrest, detain, and deport dangerous criminal illegal aliens."

Baraka said it isn't about politics, it's about protecting residents.

"We're going to file an injunction, try to get them to reverse what's happening in the property," Baraka said. 

City officials and activists against opening

Activists and government officials have made their opinions on the new facility opening clear. 

"New Jersey is actually against it, from grassroots all the way up to the governor," community organizer Li Adorano said. "They want to violate our laws, and to a certain extent, they already do."

Terri Suess, with the group Americans for Immigrants, said she has been protesting outside the facility every day at 6:30 a.m. She told CBS News New York she spoke to a man who said his wife was taken to the facility Friday.

"His wife was actually picked up at an immigration appointment where she was following through with her paperwork. She's actually married to an American and now she's in jail," Suess said.

"We are extremely disappointed by the Trump Administration's new contract with a for-profit prison company to open an ICE detention center in Newark, one of New Jersey's most populous and diverse cities," a spokesperson for Gov. Phil Murphy said in February. 

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