300 Detainees at New Jersey Facility Stop Working and Eating to Protest Conditions

About 300 people held at Delaney Hall, a detention facility in Newark, New Jersey, stopped eating and refused to work on May 22, 2026. According to New Jersey Monitor, this coordinated action was meant to protest conditions inside the facility. The fact that so many people acted together suggests the complaints were serious and widely shared — not just one person's problem.

Delaney Hall is run by the GEO Group, a major private company that operates detention facilities across the country. It contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency responsible for immigration enforcement. The facility reopened in early 2025 after being closed. When it reopened, it faced legal challenges and community protests immediately — even before anyone arrived there.

How a Detention Strike Works

A hunger strike in immigration detention carries a particular weight. People held at ICE detention facilities are not criminal prisoners. They are people held temporarily while immigration courts decide whether they can stay in the country. This means the legal protections for how they should be treated are different — in theory, stronger — than protections for convicted criminals.

In practice, that protection often doesn't work as it should. The agencies that monitor these facilities are scattered across different government offices, enforcement is uneven, and detainees have limited ways to challenge poor conditions.

A work strike adds another layer of pressure. ICE detention facilities rely on detainees to do food service, laundry, cleaning, and maintenance. People typically get paid $1 to $3 per day for this work — and many legal experts argue the work isn't truly voluntary, since detainees have little choice about whether to participate. When hundreds of people refuse to work at once, the facility's operations break down. That's why the work stoppage matters just as much as the hunger strike.

What Detainees Are Complaining About

The complaints at Delaney Hall match patterns seen at other ICE facilities across the country: inadequate medical care, poor food, limited access to lawyers, and bad sanitation.

This isn't new. Similar strikes have happened at detention centers in California, Georgia, and Washington state over the past several years. Each time, local organizations and lawyers push back, Congress sends inquiries, government inspectors look into it, and sometimes small improvements are made — but then conditions often drift back to the way they were. The question now is whether anything will be different this time around.

Why This Facility and Why Now

The current federal administration has made detaining more immigrants a top priority. Congress and the president have approved money to expand ICE detention to hold more than 40,000 people every day. That creates pressure on facilities to accept more detainees than they may have been designed for.

To meet this demand, the government has reopened facilities that had been closed for having serious problems — including Delaney Hall. The push to hold more people can make it harder for facilities to follow safety rules, hire enough staff, and give detainees access to lawyers.

GEO Group and another major company called CoreCivic run detention facilities under standards set by ICE. Inspectors check whether facilities follow these standards. But government watchdogs, including the Department of Homeland Security inspector general, have found that the inspection process isn't tough enough. Inspectors often announce visits in advance, and they rely on the facilities themselves to report whether they're following the rules. That gap between the rules on paper and what actually happens is where problems build up.

The Legal and Political Picture

New Jersey has been unusually active in challenging detention practices. In 2021, the state passed a law limiting new ICE detention contracts. Delaney Hall is under a municipal contract rather than a county one — a distinction that has itself been argued about in state court. Organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey have active lawsuits about the facility's operation and conditions. The strike will likely provide more evidence for these legal cases.

Congresspeople from New Jersey have previously demanded that ICE and GEO Group be transparent about the facility and allow inspections. Whether the May 2026 strike leads to more official investigations will depend on how long it lasts, whether detainees suffer serious medical harm, and whether the story stays in the news.

What Happens Next

Detention hunger strikes usually end one of a few ways: management negotiates with strike leaders and makes some changes; the agency says conditions are fine and the strike ends without much happening; or some detainees need medical care, which escalates the situation and draws more attention.

For the people striking, this is dangerous. Refusing food harms your body, and there's a risk of punishment for participating. The fact that 300 people chose to do this suggests how serious the conditions are to them.

The broader context here is that this strike, by itself, won't change how ICE runs detention nationwide. But it adds to a growing body of evidence that advocates, lawyers, and government overseers are building — evidence that has slowly and unevenly pushed the system to make improvements over time. The question is whether the next wave of attention will be enough to change the cycle or just repeat it.