New Jersey’s D.C. Democrats say Biden administration should not support new immigrant jail

Most of New Jersey’s congressional Democrats are urging the Department of Justice not to support a new immigrant detention center planned for Newark.

In separate letters asking federal justice officials to refrain from supporting prison company GEO Group’s plan to open the Newark immigrant jail, Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat, and the state’s eight House Democrats cited President Biden’s prior comments criticizing private prisons.

Biden has said “no business should profit from the suffering of desperate people fleeing violence” and has condemned private prisons for not maintaining “the same levels of safety and security for people in the Federal criminal justice system or for correctional staff.”

“These same disparate and dangerous conditions still persist in privately operated immigration detention centers and the efforts to expand such a system must not be met with support from the federal government,” the House Democrats’ letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland reads.

Opening a new federal immigration jail in Newark would undermine the efforts of New Jerseyans and lawmakers who worked “tirelessly” to ensure no more immigration centers would open in the state, the June 6 letter adds.

Booker, meanwhile, sent a letter June 6 to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Patrick Lechleitner asking them to reconsider plans to work with GEO Group to open the Newark jail. GEO Group says in court filings that it plans to submit a proposal to ICE to turn Delaney Hall into an immigrant jail.

“A new contract would also serve as an insult to immigrant communities and advocates in New Jersey and around the country who have fought tirelessly to document the human rights abuses at private detention centers and repeatedly pushed the Administration to detain fewer people in more humane settings. I urge you to commit to not open new, privately-run immigration detention facilities in New Jersey,” Booker said.

Murphy signed a law in 2021 banning local governments and private companies from entering into contracts to detain immigrants. A federal judge deemed the law partially unconstitutional last year after CoreCivic — which runs an immigrant jail in Elizabeth — sued the state over the law, with the judge saying the state cannot bar the federal government from contracting with a private company to detain immigrants. The state has appealed.

Attorneys for the Department of Justice in legal filings in that case said it would be “catastrophic” if CoreCivic were forced to close its jail.

GEO Group has cited similar arguments in its lawsuit against Murphy.

The Elizabeth Detention Center is the last functioning immigrant detention center in New Jersey. A study from Detention Watch Network found that conditions in the jail have long been unsanitary and dangerous, alleging people incarcerated there lack access to air or sunlight, live in quarters infested with vermin, and face abusive treatment from staff members.