New Jersey sues for full access to Delaney Hall detention center
New Jersey officials sued the operator of the Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark on Tuesday, seeking full access to the facility in response to reports that raised “significant concerns about public health conditions.”
New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport’s office brought the case in the name of the state health commissioner, Raynard Washington. In the complaint, the state said the concerns about the facility, which has been the subject of recent protests, include “overcrowding and lack of ventilation; lack of or inadequate medical care or hygiene practices; unsanitary food and drink preparation and storage; and the unchecked spread of communicable diseases like COVID-19 and Influenza.”
The complaint also cited reports of “unsanitary bathroom conditions and potentially inadequate Tuberculosis infection control practices.”
The suit was filed in state court against The Geo Group, which the state said denied access to “significant portions” of the center when it tried to conduct a health and safety inspection.
The state warned that failing to fully inspect these issues threatens not only Delaney Hall residents but also “the public at large, if employees or other visitors to the facility contract an illness and spread it after they have departed the facility.”
In an accompanying filing asking the court to direct the company to provide access for a proper inspection, the state said the company “has already exacerbated the existing harms” by denying such access.
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Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro,” a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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