Employees at Delaney Hall, the Newark, New Jersey, detention center where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) holds illegal aliens, say they have faced harassment and had their property damaged by “Abolish ICE” rioters who have stationed themselves outside the facility for months.
In an open letter to the public that ran in the Washington Post, Delaney Hall employees said their jobs have been made immensely more difficult as a result of anti-ICE rioters outside the detention center who have repeatedly attacked law enforcement.
“We are the men and women who work at Delaney Hall. We are nurses, case managers, food service workers, maintenance staff, and security personnel,” the employees wrote. “We live in Newark and the surrounding communities, and we come to work each day to do our jobs and to care for the people in our charge. We are writing because our perspective has been largely absent from the recent coverage of this facility.”
They continued:
In recent weeks, the demonstrations outside Delaney Hall have grown increasingly hostile toward us. We have been confronted, filmed, and verbally harassed as we arrive for and leave our shifts. Protesters have attempted to block vehicles from entering and leaving the facility, and some of us have had our personal vehicles damaged. Confrontations outside the gates escalated to the point that local authorities imposed an overnight curfew on the surrounding neighborhood. We understand that people hold strong views about immigration policy. We are not policymakers. We are employees trying to get to work safely, and the danger and intimidation directed at us have made that increasingly difficult. [Emphasis added]
…
Our job is to provide safe, professional, and humane care to the detainees housed at this facility, and we take that responsibility seriously. Ensuring the safety and well-being of the detainees and of one another remains our first priority. The disruption outside these walls does nothing to advance the safety of anyone inside them. [Emphasis added]
On Wednesday, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee made a number of claims at a hearing on the detention center, suggesting that conditions inside the facility are poor and inhumane to illegal alien detainees.
“Detainees experience poor ventilation, extreme cold in the winter, scalding showers, physical abuse by guards, and a shortage of basic necessities,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said. “The medical conditions of detainees are alarming.”
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials have clapped back at such claims, noting in June that conditions at New Jersey prisons are far more dangerous than the conditions at Delaney Hall.
DHS officials have said that inmates in New Jersey are two times more likely to die in a state prison than in Delaney Hall and that there are twice as many medical staff members 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.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected].
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