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https://www.dailykos.com/story/2025/12/24/2359915/-Democrat-returns-to-troubled-ICE-facility-as-Trump-s-brutality-ramps-up?pm_campaign=blog&pm_medium=rss&pm_source=

Nearly six months after a volatile oversight visit to a New Jersey immigration detention center spiraled into federal charges against Rep. LaMonica McIver, she went back.

On Tuesday, McIver joined Democratic Reps. Rob Menendez and Yvette Clarke for another tour of Delaney Hall, the privately run Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Newark that has become a flashpoint in the national debate over immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump.

The visit came days after ICE confirmed that Jean Wilson Brutus, a 41-year-old man from Haiti, died one day after being detained there, believed to be the first death linked to the center, according to The New York Times.

For McIver, the return carried real personal risk. The last time she tried to conduct oversight at Delaney Hall, it spiraled into a spectacle. During a May visit, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested before prosecutors ultimately dropped the charges. McIver was accused of “forcibly impeding and interfering” with law enforcement officers, charges she has denied while calling the case an act of “political intimidation” by the Trump administration. The matter is still unresolved.

This week’s return unfolded very differently. According to the Times, lawmakers spent more than three hours inside Delaney Hall and emerged describing what they said were grim conditions.

“There is not adequate food,” McIver said at a news conference afterward. “There is not adequate medical care. Women are not having access to OB-GYN or female products.”

According to Politico, McIver also told reporters she believes she was the one assaulted during the earlier incident and reiterated her call for Delaney Hall to be shut down. She described returning to the facility as “traumatic,” but said she intends to keep showing up.

“We’re going to continue to say that this facility should not be open,” she said. “When we left out of there, a detainee told us, ‘This is not the America that we dreamed of.’”

Delaney Hall occupies a prominent place in President Donald Trump’s second-term immigration strategy. It was the first detention center opened under his new administration and is run by GEO Group, which holds a $1 billion federal contract to detain up to 1,000 people at the site.

Related | Mass deportations are set to get even more cruel

More than 950 detainees are currently being held there, according to Menendez, who said the facility is nearing capacity without sufficient staffing. He described what detainees told lawmakers during the visit in stark terms, including one person who referred to the center as a “slaughterhouse.”

Menendez said detainees told him they weren’t getting proper medical care and that food remained a persistent problem—complaints he noted have been coming up for months. Earlier this year, those concerns escalated after unrest at the facility led to four detainees escaping, raising fresh doubts about how safely the center is being run and who’s actually in charge.

The visit also comes as immigration enforcement has ramped up nationwide. NPR reported that more than 1.6 million immigrants have lost legal status in the first 11 months of Trump’s second term, including people previously authorized to remain in the country under asylum, parole, visa, and temporary protected status programs.

Data tracked by NBC News using ICE and Customs and Border Protection figures shows that nearly 60,000 migrants were in ICE detention as of Sept. 25. While Trump administration officials say they are prioritizing arrests of people with serious criminal histories, NBC found that only 28.7% of detainees identified in custody had criminal convictions.

Lawmakers said many of the people held at Delaney Hall do not have criminal records and were arrested while attending court hearings or legal appointments related to their immigration cases. Others are in the country legally on student visas. One detainee, they said, is married to a U.S. military service member.

Federal officials dispute claims of neglect. In a statement to Politico, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said allegations that the facility is understaffed are “false,” adding that detainees receive health screenings within 12 hours of arrival, follow-up care, and access to emergency services.

“This is the best healthcare that many aliens have received in their entire lives,” McLaughlin said.

ICE has said Brutus, the immigrant from Haiti, died from “suspected natural causes” and that an investigation is ongoing. Menendez said lawmakers pressed officials for answers during Tuesday’s visit.

“It should enrage every American that we’ve allowed this administration to take advantage of a broken immigration system—and that’s what they are doing, for profit,” he said.

Incoming New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill echoed Democratic criticism of the facility, saying she has “long opposed—and continue[s] to oppose—the use of Delaney Hall and similar for-profit detention centers because they do not make us safer.”

Despite the legal case still hanging over her, McIver said she plans to continue oversight visits until Delaney Hall is shuttered. In a political climate where immigration enforcement has become both a policy weapon and a profit center, she appears intent on making the facility—and the system behind it—impossible to ignore.

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2025/12/24/2359915/-Democrat-returns-to-troubled-ICE-facility-as-Trump-s-brutality-ramps-up?pm_campaign=blog&pm_medium=rss&pm_source=