ICE Triples Number Of People Detained In Delaney Hall

By: Benjamin J. Hulac, Washington Correspondent

WASHINGTON — The number of people held at Delaney Hall, the immigration detention facility in Newark, more than tripled in November from early months this year, records show.

The average daily population for Delaney Hall reached 807 last month, a sharp uptick from September, when the site held 234 people, according to data from TRAC, a nonpartisan research group that obtains and analyzes federal records.

More than 61,000 people were held nationwide at ICE sites, as of mid-November.

Data from the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration detention sites like Delaney Hall, show about 10% of the 807 people detained at the site have criminal records.

The private firm GEO Group operates the facility under a 15-year federal contract worth more than $1 billion.

“These for-profit facilities have every incentive to fill as many beds as possible,” Dante Apaéstegui, federal policy and advocacy strategist for the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, a statewide coalition, said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News. “The spike comes as no surprise.”

A spokesman for GEO Group, Christopher Ferreira, declined to comment and referred questions to the Trump administration.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesman, Jason Koontz, said the department is assembling a statistical report on its 2025 activities.

Nearly a year into the second Trump administration, Delaney Hall, with more than 1,000 beds, is one of the largest immigration detention sites in the country and has quickly surpassed New Jersey’s second site, the Elizabeth Detention Center, in capacity.

At the Elizabeth facility, where the capacity is 300 beds, about 80% of detainees had no criminal records.

Both GEO Group and CoreCivic, another private prison company, donated to President Donald Trump’s inaugural festivities.

Federal data show the average time detainees spend at either site is 14 days, less than the average spell of about 31 days across all U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities nationwide.

While the number of detainees at Elizabeth had hovered below 300 this year, the number at Delaney Hall has steadily increased as the Trump administration set goals to detain and deport hundreds of thousands of immigrants.

Since Delaney Hall opened in May, the number of people held inside has grown from fewer than 100 in May and June to the mid-100s over the summer and the low 200s in the fall, before the recent upswing.

Officers of ICE have arrested 5,378 people in New Jersey since Trump took office in January, the ninth-most of any state in the country, according to data from the Immigration Enforcement Dashboard, a project that uses public data.

While running for president last year, Trump said immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of the county.

At his inauguration, framed his anti-immigration agenda around the goal of “returning millions of criminal aliens.”

Kristi Noem, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, has repeatedly said ICE, a sub-agency of DHS, arrests the “worst of the worst.”

Yet a recent snapshot of ICE data obtained by the Cato Institute, a libertarian group headquartered in Washington, D.C., found 5% of people detained since October were violent criminals and 73% had no criminal conviction.

Recent anti-immigration raids in the state, such as one of a Woodbridge warehouse in October or a warrantless attempt in Burlington County last month, have petrified immigrant communities.

Immigration agents are pursuing people without records who often have legal paperwork, advocates said.

“They’re targeting workers,” Apaéstegui said. “That’s become the norm here in New Jersey.”

A federal appeals court in July struck down a state law that banned private prison firms from entering into contracts with the U.S. government within New Jersey’s borders.

Last week, U.S. Reps. Donald Norcross (D-1st), Frank Pallone (D-6th), Rob Menendez (D-8th), LaMonica McIver (D-10th) and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-12th) introduced legislation that, among other steps, would phase out private detention facilities and jails within three years.

That bill has no chance of becoming law during this Congress, when Republicans hold both the House and Senate.

Twenty-three people in ICE custody have died in 2025 – the deadliest for ICE detainees since 2004, according to the American Immigration Council, a nonprofit nonpartisan organization.