Immigration and Customs Enforcement will reopen a federal immigration detention center in Newark, New Jersey that has a 1,000-bed capacity — the largest facility of its type on the East Coast.
ICE announced Thursday that Delaney Hall will be the agency’s first detention center to open under the Trump administration, which has made cracking down on illegal immigration a top priority.
“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,” acting ICE Director Caleb Vitello said in a statement.
Delaney Hall, owned by private prison company GEO Group, previously housed immigrant detainees between 2011 and 2017. It’s located next to Essex County jail.
GEO Group announced its contact with ICE on an earnings call Thursday and said that the detention center would ideally be up-and-running by the end of June, The New Jersey Monitor reported.
ICE will pay GEO Group $60 million a year for the next 15 years — a total of $900 million — to use Delaney Hall, the company said.
GEO Group CEO David Donahue said on the earnings call that Trump’s commitment to mass deportations would widen the “scale of opportunity” for the private prison company.
New Jersey currently has a law, signed by Governor Phil Murphy in 2021, that bans ICE from opening jails specifically for immigrants in the state.
That law was deemed partially unconstitutional by a federal judge in 2023.
GEO Group sued the state of New Jersey in 2024 to overturn the law, arguing that the Garden State code violates the US Constitution’s supremacy clause.
New Jersey currently has one active immigration detention located in Elizabeth, which can house 270 people.
New York, meanwhile, has three detention centers located in Buffalo, Orange County and Clinton County which have a combined 600 bed capacity, The City reported.
Pennsylvania boasts what is currently the highest-capacity detention center — the Moshannon Valley Processing Center which can hold just over 1,000 individuals.
