Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials are clapping back at Democrats, particularly Sens. Andy Kim (D-NJ) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) as well as Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), for claiming that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities are unsafe and inhumane, arguing that New Jersey prisons are far worse.
For weeks, Sherrill and other Democrats have called for the closure of Delaney Hall, the Newark-based detention facility operated by GEO Group for ICE.
“I’m deeply disturbed by reports of the poor conditions at Delaney Hall. Unsafe, inhumane, and unconstitutional living conditions are completely unacceptable,” Sherrill said in a statement last month. “I have long opposed private detention facilities and advocated against them. I will continue to call for the closure of Delaney Hall because of reports like these.”
This week, in a Senate committee hearing, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin shut down claims that ICE’s facilities like Delaney Hall are worse than state prisons. Mullin said that since Delaney Hall has opened, “not one single health violation has been written.”
“Just recently, the state of New Jersey’s health inspectors went in, they didn’t find one single violation. If you compare it to what the state prison system is, they have three prisons that are in ‘deplorable’ conditions, that’s what the health inspector said,” Mullin told Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT).
“Delayed healthcare is an average of 32 percent delayed within 48 hours,” Mullin said of New Jersey’s prisons. “… health inspectors were just [at Delaney Hall], we had zero health violations, zero.”
On Thursday, DHS officials circulated statistics on New Jersey’s prisons, suggesting that inmates are two times more likely to die in a state prison than in Delaney Hall and that there are twice as many medical staff at Delaney Hall as in the state’s prisons.
From 2018 to 2024, more than 330 inmates have died in New Jersey prisons, including 42 deaths in 2024. This indicates that on average, more than 40 inmates die every year in New Jersey prisons, DHS officials said.
Democrats have also claimed that Delaney Hall detainees are on a hunger strike. A report from the Daily Wire this week found that detainees claiming to be on a hunger strike are eating sushi, Cheetos, Honey Buns, and smoked clams from the facility’s commissary.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected].
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