Delaney Hall, which is located near the airport in Newark, is expected to house 1,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has announced the imminent reopening of the Delaney Hall Facility in Newark after reaching an agreement with the facility’s owner to reestablish the federal immigration processing and detention center at the 1,000-bed facility.
“This detention center is the first to open under the new administration,” said acting ICE Director Caleb Vitello. “The location near an international airport streamlines logistics, and helps facilitate the timely processing of individuals in our custody as we pursue President Trump’s mandate to arrest, detain and remove illegal aliens from our communities.”
The Geo Group, which owns the facility, is one of the largest private prison companies in the country. It had operated the site as an immigration detention center until 2017 when it became a halfway house. It is located near the Essex County Correctional Facility.
The GEO Group announced that it had been awarded a 15-year, fixed-price contract by ICE to provide support services for the Delaney Hall Facility. GEO’s support services include security, maintenance, and food services, as well as access to recreational amenities, medical care, and legal counsel.
The new support services contract is expected to generate in excess of $60 million in annualized revenues for GEO in the first full year of operations. GEO estimates the 15-year value of the contract with normal cost of living adjustments to be approximately $1 billion.
The building should be open by the second quarter of 2025 with revenues and earnings from the new contract normalizing during the second half of 2025.
“Our company-owned Delaney Hall Facility will play an important role in providing needed detention bedspace and support services for ICE in the Northeast,” said George C. Zoley, executive chairman of GEO. “We are continuing to prepare for what we believe is an unprecedented opportunity to help the federal government meet its expanded immigration enforcement priorities.”
The GEO Group is a government service provider, specializing in design, financing, development, and support services for secure facilities, processing centers, and community reentry centers in the United States, Australia, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. GEO’s services include secure transportation, electronic monitoring, community-based programs, and correctional health and mental health care.
First Friends, an immigrant support group, called the opening of the center a “gut-punch.”
“New Jersey’s detention capacity is set to explode—five times what it is now,” the organization said in a statement. “The first new detention facility to open under the Trump administration will be Delaney Hall in Newark, a 1,000-bed facility run by Geo Group, one of the largest private prison companies in the world. And with it, the cruelty of our immigration system is about to go into overdrive. It’s a gut punch, no doubt, especially knowing this is just the start of what the current administration has in store.”
New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice (NJAIJ), which is the state’s largest immigration coalition, put out a statement, noting that the state’s federal representatives have spoken out against expanding ICE detention centers, the state legislature has not taken any action to prevent it from happening in New Jersey.
“ICE’s own statement makes its intent clear: the facility will not only target New Jersey’s own diverse communities, its proximity to the international airport will make it a regional hub for enforcement across the Northeast,” the statement said.
U.S. Sen. Andy Kim released a statement regarding the re-opening of Delaney Hall.
“No company should be profiting off of the separation of families and our broken immigration system,” Kim said. “Reopening Delaney Hall won’t secure the border or fix our immigration system. We need to focus on solutions, not padding the pockets of corporations.”
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