Andy Kim Wants Delaney Hall to Outrage You |
Delaney Hall, a federal immigration detention center in Newark, New Jersey, has been the site of escalating clashes in recent days as demonstrators have gathered in support of detainees on a reported hunger strike over poor conditions in the facility, only to be met with force from federal agents. Numerous arrests have taken place, including of nine demonstrators who were taken into custody last Thursday.
New Jersey senator Andy Kim was involved in one of these skirmishes last Monday when he visited the site to conduct oversight and was hit with pepper spray alongside protesters. Kim is just the latest local politician to find himself on the front lines of the fight over Delaney Hall, which was reopened as a detention facility last year. LaMonica McIver, a New Jersey representative, is currently facing federal charges after being accused of assaulting an ICE officer during an attempted oversight visit last year, allegations she denies.
I spoke with Kim on Friday about what he learned during his visit to Delaney Hall and whether anything has really changed at the Department of Homeland Security since Kristi Noem’s firing.
Could you walk me through what you experienced during your visit to the facility?I went to Delaney Hall — I’ve gone several times, but I went in particular because of the reports of protests inside. I wanted to hear why this hunger strike was happening. I showed up on Monday and, first of all, was not allowed inside even though I had an appointment. Geo Group, the company that runs Delaney Hall — the guards just decided they weren’t going to let me in, which just shows you they just don’t care at all about what the American people or Congress thinks about them, or about oversight. I actually had to call Secretary Markwayne Mullin directly and talk to him personally to be able to get access into the facility. And when I went inside and told the Geo Group head about being denied entry, he actually just looked me in the eye and called me a liar. Just said that I was making the whole thing up, which is, again, just absolutely mind-boggling that taxpayers are giving them a billion dollars to run Delaney Hall.
I went and talked to the detainees. Trump often calls them the worst of the worst, saying that these are the violent criminals. But the people I met were a pregnant woman that’s not getting the medical care that she needs. She’s being held there indefinitely and she literally just asked me, like, does she need to be prepared to have her baby in Delaney Hall? There was an 18-year-old high-school senior who just wants to go to prom and graduate. A stage-three lung-cancer patient who actually wants to leave the country. He wants to just go back home and spend whatever remaining months he has with his family, but he’s stuck and can’t even go. These are the people that I met.
The other thing I just want to hit, because the detainees were very clear with me, is that they have concerns about the conditions, but the main thing they’re protesting is the fact that there’s just no movement when it comes to their cases — that they are not having anything that resembles some........