Dozens of protesters have spent days surrounding the gates of an immigration detention center where detainees are on hunger strike to protest what they have described as unconstitutional and inhumane conditions inside.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in military gear with heavily armored police trucks remain in a standoff with protesters outside the Delaney Hall detention center in Newark, New Jersey, where agents have torn down makeshift barriers that protesters used to block vehicles from transferring detainees after clashes over Memorial Day weekend.
Rep. Rob Menendez performed an oversight visit inside the facility on Tuesday, one day after federal agents hit Sen. Andy Kim with chemical agents and blocked the state’s governor Mikie Sherrill from entering.
Menendez said the strike is still ongoing — conditions have not improved, medical care is “non-existent,” and Donald Trump’s administration appears to be retaliating against detainees by denying them visitations, he told reporters.
“They want the focus, for all these cameras and the right-wing media, to be what’s happening outside here, to make that the story, because they don’t want the story to be about the individuals inside,” Menendez said. “They’re mothers, they’re fathers, they’re people who are married to U.S. citizens, people who have U.S. citizen children, people who are pregnant — that’s who’s inside.”
Nearly 300 detainees signed an open letter last week alleging inadequate food and medical care and denial of due process rights.
“We feel vulnerable and, in a way, kidnapped — detained without justification — not to mention that we are being tortured physically and psychologically due to the poor food resources provided in these detention centers,” they wrote.
They signed the letter “S.O.S.”
Advocacy groups say the detention center has cut off visitation hours and blocked access to tablet devices that detainees use to speak with family members.
Several Democratic members of Congress who visited the facility said it’s also plagued by filthy bathrooms, inadequate medical care and abuse. Detainees also say they have been pressured to accept deportation to far-flung nations in Africa, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where global health authorities are battling a growing Ebola outbreak.
Homeland Security has repeatedly denied that any detainees are hunger striking while accusing Democratic officials of “spreading smears” about the facility.
“During hunger strikes, ICE continues to provide three meals a day, delivered to the detained alien’s room, and an adequate supply of drinking water or other beverages,” a spokesperson told The Independent.
The agency provides “clean water, clothing, bedding, showers, soap, and toiletries,” and detainees have “access to phones to communicate with their family members and lawyers,” the spokesperson said.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwanye Mullin called visits from Democratic officials a “political stunt.”
DHS has also denied that anyone was hit by pepper balls and blamed demonstrators for escalating a protest that prompted officers to start firing into the crowd.
“The First Amendment protects speech and peaceful assembly — not rioting,” the agency said Monday.
Martin Soto, a Peruvian immigrant who had been detained at the facility since February and whose pregnant wife Gabriela has protested outside, is one of the organizers of the strike.
He was moved out of the detention center and sent to the Elizabeth Contract Detention Facility on Monday.
“The only reason to remove him to Elizabeth Detention Center is to get him away from the people that he’s been around for the last several months, who he’s been organizing with to raise awareness of the conditions,” Menendez said Tuesday.
After he was caught in a cloud of pepper spray during Monday’s demonstrations, Senator Kim said he is pressing for the facility to restore all family visitation visits.
“What I witnessed was really heartbreaking — just seeing Americans fighting other Americans in the streets, the level of division,” Kim told The New Jersey Monitor. “And it’s not just that, it’s what I heard and saw inside the detention facility.”
Kim said he spoke with dozens of the 700-plus detainees inside the jail, including a pregnant woman who said she is not receiving medical attention and another woman whose family was unable to find out any information about her condition after she was hospitalized for two weeks.
“They said they can’t divulge that information because of security purposes,” he told the outlet Tuesday.
He said family members were instead told to file public information requests to get information about their loved ones.
“I mean, that’s absurd,” he said.
