New Jersey Lawmakers Seek To Tax Private Prisons Following Delaney Hall Controversy

By Devon Williams (NJ State House News Service)

TRENTON, N.J. – After weeks of protests over alleged inhumane conditions at Newark’s Delaney Hall immigration detention facility, lawmakers advanced a bill Monday that would tax private prison operators and direct the revenue toward legal aid and community programs for detainees.

Delaney Hall and Elizabeth Detention Center are the only two privately operated prisons in New Jersey, both of which are under contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and occupied by ICE.

Bill A4077 would institute an 8% contract fee, a $15 per-inmate-per-day fee, and a 3% surtax on the facility’s total taxable income. 

Revenue would be directed to two funds within the state Department of Human Services to support legal services for those in immigration court and a new fund to supplement community-based programs related to food security, housing, recreation, job training and youth mentorship in affected communities. 

Assembly Member Michelle Drulis, a Democrat from Raritan and the primary bill sponsor, said the new fees were a way to aid those being held at or impacted by such facilities.

“This legislation is about the growing financial burden that federal policies and private prisons – two of which are operating immigration detention centers in New Jersey – place on our communities and on our taxpayers, and a proposal to shift those costs off local residents and back onto the corporations and shareholders that are profiting from an unjust system,” she said.

According to Drulis, nationwide, “more than 90% of immigration detention is now run by private, for-profit companies whose business model is based on profits by expanding the number of detainees. Last year alone, these corporations reported more than $4.8 billion in revenue.”

Republican Assembly Members Dawn Fantasia, from Franklin Borough (Sussex), and Brian Rumpf, from Little Egg Harbor Township, voted in opposition to the bill, both stating that it was “ridiculous.” Fantasia also called the measure “unconstitutional,” rather than helpful.

“This bill is essentially a political statement that we do not like the fact that the detention hall exists in New Jersey, and we are going to do everything that we can to make it more difficult for the operators of such detention halls,” said Rumpf.

“It is not about accountability, rehabilitation, or public safety. It is about politically unpopular contractors being targeted because some people in the building do not like illegal immigration law,” said Fantasia. “The state is literally taxing detention and using the money to fund opposition to detention. You cannot make this up. This is not law. It is activism with a tax bill.” 

“It is absurd. It is unconstitutional,” Fantasia said.

Fantasia said instead, funds should go to victims of illegal immigrants who have committed crimes while in the country. 

But Drulis said the measure “is not simply a legal program. It is also an economic safeguard that protects New Jersey’s workforce, its tax base, and our long-term resilience” by protecting people wrongfully detained and providing adequate care and counsel. 

Delaney Hall, and volatile protests outside the facility, has captured national attention. In recent days, the state removed two pregnant women from the facility who needed healthcare. Because the Department of Health has not completed a full inspection, lawmakers remain divided over whether federal oversight is adequately protecting detainees. 

Gov. Mikie Sherrill said Monday that she was allowed limited access to Delaney Hall after weeks of being turned away.

“What I received was a closely controlled and limited tour of the facility. That is unacceptable. I was not allowed to meet or speak directly with the detainees, which continues to raise serious questions about the real conditions of the facility and the treatment of those held there,” she said.

The committee moved the bill forward Monday on a 4-2 partisan vote. Two members, Joe Danielsen, a Democrat from Franklin Twp. (Somerset) and Yvonne Lopez, a Democrat from Perth Amboy, were absent. An identical measure is pending before the Senate Law and Public Safety Committee.