[Editorial Note: The Partisan is republishing a statement by NJ Build Up Resistance Now (BURN), a revolutionary community organization based in New Jersey, which details the background and current status of the ongoing work and hunger strike in Delaney Hall. For the past 10 days, mass activists have been fighting and resisting the bipartisan repression of the Old State on the front lines outside Delaney Hall. In exposing the so-called progressives and opportunists, the organization powerfully affirmed: “We must forge ourselves as powerful activists and leaders by actually engaging in class struggle alongside the people who do it every single day.”]
Detainees at the East Coast’s largest ICE facility just launched a work & hunger strike. Why are ICE and GEO Group so afraid of this strike, and what makes it so threatening to their for-profit system?
Delaney Hall is the largest ICE detention facility on the East Coast. However, ICE doesn’t run the facility themselves. It’s run by a private company, GEO Group. In fact, 86% of ICE facilities across the country are run by private contractors.
Aside from raids and street arrests, the bulk of the process of immigrant detention and deportation is carried out by contractors, not ICE agents. In New Jersey, when someone is detained and incarcerated by ICE, they will mainly interact with employees of GEO Group or CoreCivic, two of the largest private prison companies in the world.
GEO Group employs intake officers, case managers (at Delaney Hall as well as at the ICE field office in Newark), detention officers (prison guards), lieutenants (the guards’ supervisors), food service staff, mailroom staff, laundry staff, healthcare professionals, technicians, transportation officers (between booking and detention facility, or between different detention facilities), and various administrative staff.
One of the primary roles of a GEO Group Detention Officer is to make sure that detainees work to keep the facility operational (usually assisting with food service, laundry, etc.) which is a cornerstone of GEO Group’s business model. A program of forced labor means they don’t have to hire as many staff. In some ICE facilities, the GEO group does not hire any staff at all for certain positions such as janitorial or cooking.
Despite calling it a “voluntary work program,” a 2019 lawsuit revealed that “officers threatened to reassign detainees to crowded, dirty housing areas if they refused to work… detainees sometimes aren’t provided items like toilet paper, soap, toothpaste, and lotion and instead must buy them from CoreCivic’s commissary—often using payment earned in the work program.”
It is estimated that GEO Group brings in about $33 to $72 million in profits from labor savings. In other words: FORCED LABOR IS RESPONSIBLE FOR UP TO 25% OF THE COMPANY’S TOTAL PROFITS.
Just like the HELIX Hub in New Brunswick, where the Department of War funnels money for military research through Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm (America’s Frontier Fund), what we’re seeing at Delaney Hall is a collusion of private, for-profit business interests and the violent authority of the state. As long as our current system of capitalist-imperialism remains in place, the government will continue to serve the interests of private capital, not the people.
This is why ICE outsources nearly every task they legally can, including detention, ground and air transportation, target selection, and case management—to companies like Palantir, GEO Group, and Graphite (an Israeli-based spyware company). The private companies specialize in supplying government services, and in turn, the government serves their business interests. This inhumane, deadly deportation system unleashes its horror, not just because the president dislikes immigrants or because politicians are racist, but because there’s money to be made.
The ongoing labor and hunger strike at Delaney Hall directly threatens this system. Their labor is worth up to $72 million. In retaliation, organizers of the strike are being targeted for transfer and deportation.
When the detainees at Delaney Hall launched their strike, they stated that their demand is freedom. Not better conditions, not better treatment, but full and ensuing justice. They are demanding the release of all sick, young and elderly—and for a meeting with the Governor.
This strike comes after years of abuse, exploitation, and inhumane punishment at Delaney Hall. Recently, detainees said they found live worms in their meals. Medical issues are neglected, the facilities are decrepit, and over the winter, 41-year-old Jean Brutus died while inside the facility.
Governor Mikie Sherrill visited the facility on Monday, May 25th. She left after an hour, without even going inside.
