The Billion-Dollar Concentration Camp Your Taxes Built
Delaney Hall is many things: a grift on taxpayers, a concentration camp, a for-profit prison, and a stain on national character. Prisoners are starving - but GEO Group's shareholders are profiting.
As the hunger/labor strike at Delaney Hall stretched into its second week, DHS released a typically Orwellian statement: “There is no hunger strike at Delaney Hall.” Ah! Thanks for clearing that up. After all, why would DHS lie to us?
Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, is a privately-owned immigration detention facility baby’s first concentration camp operated by GEO Group. GEO Group is the largest prison operator in the United States, and over half of their revenue comes from the federal government (so, you and me — that’s our money). The company has a billion-dollar contract with ICE to run the Delaney Hall camp for 15 years. One billion of our tax dollars go to fund a place where women miscarry all alone and prisoners are beaten, gassed, and served rotten food and bad milk.
Roughly 800 people are currently imprisoned there, and we know that at least several hundred are refusing meals. Maybe that’s partly because the food they are being served is shit. After he managed to get inside, New Jersey Senator Andy Kim (D) was shown a carton of rock-solid, fully congealed milk. Try pouring that over some Cheerios.
The prisoners have written an open letter both detailing the shitty conditions inside and stating their demands, which you can read in full here, but they claim the food contains worms or is in a “state of decay”, that most prisoners have a “persistent flu … that won’t go away”, as well as conjunctivitis, urinary tract infections, and coughs, and describe the bathrooms as “inhumane.” Requests for care take weeks to be answered, and often there is no response. Nurses refuse to treat them, or they only prescribe Tylenol. Bond requests are denied with no legal basis.
The prisoners also claim many are being coerced and intimidated into signing voluntary departure/deportation paperwork.
What the reports from the prisoners (and those who have managed to get access for a visit) reveal is that Delaney Hall is both a for-profit prison, and a labor camp. And yet another grift.
The prisoners are performing the work our taxpayer money should be paying for — they are preparing the food, cleaning, doing maintenance duties, and shoveling snow. They are being paid $1 per hour. Some are paid nothing at all, which you’d think would go against the 13th Amendment, but it’s okay to make prisoners slaves.
Why are they being forced to do all this? Well, think about that $1 billion contract. The less of it GEO Group spends on overhead — things like proper food, maintenance workers, or doctors — the more they get to pocket.
Just like a nursing home or a senior living center that’s been bought by a hedge fund, staffing and services are reduced to a skeleton crew. There’s no one to help grandma if she falls, because stockholders need those dividends, baby.
As mentioned earlier, Sen. Andy Kim attempted to get in — as is his constitutional right, being a U.S. Senator representing New Jersey. He was initially turned away, because in Trump’s America in 2026, poorly trained private security guards have more power than a fucking senator. On his second attempt he managed to get access after personally calling up Markwayne Mullin, our new Secretary of Homeland Security, and explaining to him how laws work. His visit is why we know much of what we do about conditions inside.
So who are these prisoners? You know: “the worst of the worst.”
One, Martin Soto, was grabbed by ICE while he was out buying diapers. His wife, Gabriela, is four months pregnant — but that hasn’t stopped her from organizing the protests outside Delaney Hall.
Inside, Kim met a man in a wheelchair who’d been stuck in the same room for four months, because Delaney Hall is not equipped for wheelchairs. See, that would cost money.
The senator also met a man with stage three lung cancer. He wants to go back to his home country, but they won’t let him yet. Full prisons = full pockets. The senator also met a pregnant woman who told him she was not receiving medical care.
Kim noted in an interview with Jon Favreau that “they could hire more doctors tomorrow, or today — but that’s going to be less profit for them. They could have better quality food … but that’s cutting into their profits.”
Kim doesn’t speak Spanish, so he had a translator for his visit — a prisoner, an 18-year-old high school senior, stuck in there all by herself. She told him all she wanted to do is go to prom and graduate, but she’s busy doing a job our taxpayer dollars should be paying a professional for.
Many of the prisoners’ cases are being drawn out. Some have been inside for over a year. But paperwork has ground to a halt. Nothing is moving forward. You can’t get paid for prisoners who aren’t there.
So: prisoners are being neglected, abused, fed rotten, worm-infested food, and lack proper medical care — even if they’re pregnant, or have cancer. But how’s it going outside for the protesters?
So glad you asked! ICE agents and state troopers have been taking turns kettling and beating the shit out of the peaceful protesters who pose no threat. Those attacks have included tear gas, pepper balls, pepper spray, and of course, batons to the skull. A fucking armored BearCat with a mounted gun was brought out at one point. So you know, a proportional response.
Notably, this is the same place where both the mayor of Newark Ras J. Baraka and NJ Rep. LaMonica McIver were arrested in 2025. For attempting to do her job (simple oversight), Rep. McIver faces 17 years in prison, on three felony counts.
So it’s no surprise that Sen. Kim himself got a lungful of pepper spray when he tried to defuse things outside between the protesters and the agents of the state. Of course, as a senator he received the VIP treatment, and first aid was administered to him right there on the sidewalk.
To be clear: Our own elected leaders are being arrested, prosecuted, and physically attacked for trying to make sure people don’t starve in a labor camp, in a state they are (allegedly, at least) in charge of.
It now seems like simply a matter of time before violent ICE agents or private prison guards kill an elected official.
Maybe it seems to you like things are quieting down. Yes, Kristi Noem got shitcanned, as did Greg Bovino. Alligator Auschwitz is in the process of being shut down. The violent, militarized ICE raids in Minneapolis and elsewhere have been toned down, and ICE hasn’t publicly murdered American citizens in the streets lately (at least not on camera).
But don’t be fooled. ICE is still here, doing their thing — and they answer to no one. Not governors, not representatives, and not senators.
Meanwhile, New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill seems to want to “both sides” this one. To her credit, the governor has called for Delaney Hall to be shut down. To her shame, she has not, you know, fucking done that. She is the governor. Presumably she could send in a SWAT team, right? Instead, she’s the one who sent the state troopers there to defuse the protests, which is a bit like using gasoline to put out a forest fire.
In a development surprising absolutely no one, the state troopers knocked over the barricades (which they erected themselves) in order to crack some heads. The governor has subsequently lied about this, blaming the protesters for instigating the violence. Footage tells a different story.
It’s crucial to remember that over 50 people have died in these camps (both in ICE and CPB custody) all over the country, and others have simply disappeared. No one knows where they are.
Kim described a feeling of “inevitable violence” at the scene. “They want $70 billion more for ICE. To do this. And it [the funding] goes right into GEO Group.”
“This is happening in our name, with our money,” said Kim. He’s correct when he says that GEO Group is “profiting off of human misery.” But their stockholders can celebrate — the company reported a 96% increase in profits and a $100 million rise in quarterly revenue, as compared to the first quarter of 2025.
“They can afford to hire more doctors. … They could afford to have better quality food that isn’t rotten and disgusting, but that’s less profit for GEO Group,” said Kim. He deserves praise for putting his own body between the violent federal agents and the protesters; it’s safe to say there aren’t many senators who would have the sack for it. Without his efforts, we would know even less about conditions inside Delaney Hall.
This is probably just a coincidence, but Tom Homan – current “Border Czar” and former acting director of ICE – worked for GEO Group for years as a consultant.
That’s not “blurring the line” between our corporate overlords and the federal government. It’s completely erasing it. Our government masters are our corporate masters. There is no real difference, as they glide back and forth through the revolving door linking for-profit prisons and high ranking members of the Trump administration.
I’ll let Killer Mike close this one out:
But thanks to Reaganomics, prison turned to profits
'Cause free labor's the cornerstone of US economics
'Cause slavery was abolished, unless you are in prison
You think I am, then read the 13th Amendment
Involuntary servitude and slavery it prohibits
That's why they givin' offenders time in double digits
What? I don’t want my taxes to pay for these concentration camps! Thank you, Senator, for your leadership and service.
When will he start acting like a U.S. Senator and not a common ranting activist?