Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) tries to broker a de-escalation between ICE agents and protesters outside Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, May 25, 2026.Stephanie Keith/Getty
“I certainly didn’t see anything at Delaney Hall that gives me a sense that things have changed since Minnesota,” Andy Kim told me.
The New Jersey senator, a first-term Democrat, drew headlines Monday after he and other protesters were pepper-sprayed by ICE agents during a rally outside Delaney Hall, a private prison in Newark, New Jersey that ICE has repurposed to detain immigrants—nearly 900 as of early April, according to agency data reviewed by NBC News.
ICE is holding “a man who has Stage 3 lung cancer,” Kim told me. He wants to “spend his final months… with his family. But they just won’t let him go.”
Kim joined advocates, organizers, community members, and the families of those detained at Delaney during ongoing protests condemning the horrific conditions inside—including the dismissal of essential medical attention, the lack of food, and the absence of air conditioning.
Early that afternoon, ICE agents swarmed people who had gathered at the entrance—a DHS spokesperson claimed there were approximately 125 protesters outside the building—some of whom had installed barricades, and many of whom later formed a human chain before ICE deployed chemical suppressants. ICE agents have mounted numerous further attacks on protesters throughout the week, charging and striking them with batons and driving vehicles into the crowd; some protesters reinforced their barricades with cement blocks in response.
“There’s an 18-year-old high school senior in there who just wants to go to prom and graduation,” Kim told me in an interview. “There was a man who has Stage 3 lung cancer [who is] not getting medical treatment. He wants to leave, go back home, [and] spend his final months that the doctors say that he had left with his family. But they just won’t let him go.”
Delaney Hall is managed by the private prison firm GEO Group, which in February received a $1 billion, 15-year contract from ICE to hold immigrants there. (The agency also spent nearly $130 million to buy a warehouse in Roxbury, New Jersey, that it plans to turn into a detention center; Kim and fellow New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker have introduced legislation to block those conversion projects).
GEO Group guards stopped Kim from entering the facility to inspect it, forcing him to personally call Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin for admittance. Under Mullin, who assumed leadership of the agency in March, agents have been deployed to airports, continue to occupy cities, and still terrorize people with impunity—although Mullin’s nomination was meant in part to reform the department’s image after the ouster of former head Kristi Noem.
Kim also tried to de-escalate the standoff between protesters and agents outside Delaney when ICE agents told him that they were going to push their vehicles through the crowd.
“I told them: ‘You can’t just plow your way through this crowd of civilians. You should be doing something to try to minimize the potential for violence,” Sen. Kim said. “They just said that they had to get through, and they were just going to do it, no matter what the cause.”
The most recent rallies come as hundreds of people being held at Delaney Hall began a hunger and labor strike on Friday to demand the immediate release of those with serious medical conditions and young and elderly people, as well as an investigation into the facility.
“We are not striking to demand better treatment and conditions,” those on strike said in a statement released on Friday. “We are doing this to demand freedom.”
“Many of them have been there eight, ten, twelve months, and there’s no progress when it comes to their case in court.”
Nearly 300 people signed a letter, which was smuggled out of the detention center the week before, detailing violations of their due process and worsening conditions.
“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,” one letter reads in part. “Families are being destroyed and separated, where there are children, nieces, and minors who are suffering a very strong psychological impact because they do not understand the situation, and in some cases they have witnessed the arrests of their relatives, who have been struck by tragedy and the economic burden, since in most cases we are heads of household.”
The people Kim met with at Delaney “ran into the hallway to get a piece of paper off a bulletin board and showed it to me. It said that on Tuesday, after the [Memorial Day] holidays, this one judge has 74 cases before them in just one day,” he told me. “Many of them have been there eight, 10, 12 months, and there’s no progress when it comes to their case in court.”
Pax Christi New Jersey, a Catholic peace advocacy group, alleges that ICE has responded to the hunger and labor strikes by, among other things, canceling visitation and removing access to phones for large periods of time, leaving lights on throughout the night, and intermittently shutting off water. The group also stated that many people being detained are frustrated with media coverage that downplays, as those on strike stated Friday, the fact that detainees “are doing this to demand freedom.”
In response to a video clip posted Monday on X that showed Kim receiving treatment after getting pepper-sprayed, DHS claimed that “no individuals were directly struck by pepper ball projectiles,” referring to the protesters as “rioters” and implying that they had assaulted ICE agents.
“GEO Group and CoreCivic and others are making their fortunes” from immigrant detention, Kim said. “It’s coming at our expense.”
In a separate statement, Mullin called the actions of Kim and other New Jersey lawmakers who showed up at Delaney Hall “nothing more than a political stunt” and called the people detained there “murderers, pedophiles, rapists, and drug traffickers.”
Selenia Destefani, the managing attorney for Nova Law Group, which represents dozens of people detained at Delaney Hall, told NBC News on Tuesday that her clients have been given expired meals and food with worms in it. Lawmakers who went inside Delaney Hall backed up those claims.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday that the amount of food given to detainees was “very sparse”: “They get up and have breakfast at 4 in the morning, lunch at maybe 12, dinner at 4, and very small portions, so it’s impossible,” Nadler said, “and very often, there are maggots in the food.”
“This isn’t a Holiday Inn. We’re not providing luxury housing. What we’re doing is providing a sanitary place for them to be detained,” Mullin said in a Thursday morning interview on Fox & Friends. “We’re providing them three meals a day. We’re meeting the calorie standard.”
Meanwhile, Kim told me, “GEO Group and CoreCivic and others are making their fortunes” from immigrant detention, “[and] it’s coming at our expense.”
