Company will get $60M a year to open first new ICE jail in NJ

NEWARK — As the Trump administration ramps up enforcement against illegal immigration, officials announced Thursday that the first new detention center will open in New Jersey.

The facility will be at an existing and currently vacant private prison with a 1,000-bed capacity.

The prison is owned by The GEO Group, which got the 15-year contract to provide the facility along with security, maintenance, food services, recreational amenities, medical care, and legal counsel.

The company expects to earn $60 million from the deal in the first year, and collect $1 billion in 15 years.

New Jersey bans immigration detention centers

The announcement could be challenged by the state, which is embroiled in litigation with The GEO Group over a law banning immigration detention centers. The company says the 2021 law signed by Gov. Phil Murphy is unconstitutional. In 2023, a federal judge said the state law does violate the rights of private companies, but the case remains under appeal.

ICE officials did not say when the facility would open but the publicly traded company based in Boca Raton, Florida, said it expects to reopen Delaney Hall sometime in the spring.

Acting ICE Director Caleb Vitello said Delaney Hall's location near Newark Liberty International Airport "streamlines logistics, and helps facilitate the timely processing of individuals in our custody as we pursue President Trump’s mandate to arrest, detain and remove illegal aliens from our communities.”

The facility is near the Essex County jail on industrial Doremus Avenue.

Opposition to reopening of Delaney Hall

Democratic officials in New Jersey, including U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., a former mayor of Newark, decried the announcement.

"GEO Group has a documented history of gross neglect, including malnourishment, inhumane living conditions, forced labor, and the physical and sexual abuse of people detained at its facilities. Yet this administration is cutting them a $1 billion check," Booker said.

U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J. 12th District, blasted the decision as "corruption and inhumanity" because the company "was the first corporation to max out its donations to [the Trump] campaign before going on to give even more money to his super PACs.

“Private prisons are incompatible with a fair and moral justice system, but this is even more despicable," Watson Coleman said. "This company gives money to the Trump campaign. The Trump Administration sets quotas to round up residents. Then, the Trump Administration reopens their private prison to house everyone swept up by the arrest quotas so Trump’s cronies can turn a profit on human suffering."

ACLU-NJ Executive Director Amol Sinha called the announcement an "attack on our state and only adds to the rising fear felt by people who call our state home. This is a critical moment that demands action from state and local leaders."

“Without satisfying city property-use requirements, inspections, and permits, Delaney Hall cannot lawfully open in Newark at this time," Newark Mayor Ras Baraka said on Thursday evening.

“Regardless of the process, an immigrant detention center is not welcomed here. ICE’s stated intention to round up ‘criminals’ is a thin veil that does not conceal their scheme to violate people’s rights, desecrate the Constitution, and disassemble our democracy,” Baraka said in a written statement shared to his own and the city's official social media platforms.

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