Governor Mikie Sherrill requested access on Sunday evening. ICE turned her away Monday morning while roughly 300 detainees inside entered day five of a hunger and labor strike, according to detainee and advocate accounts.
TRENTON, N.J. — Governor Mikie Sherrill stood outside the gates of Delaney Hall on Memorial Day morning and learned what federal power looks like up close. ICE turned her away.
The first sitting governor of New Jersey to attempt an inspection of the state's largest immigrant detention center walked back to her car while roughly 300 detainees inside entered the sixth day of a hunger and labor strike, according to detainee and advocate accounts that have not been independently verified.
Sherrill had requested access on Sunday evening, according to her office. The denial came Monday morning. By Tuesday, the governor was calling the facility's conditions "unsafe, inhumane, and unconstitutional," language she had used before the visit, based on secondhand reports from congressional delegations and immigrant advocates. What she saw from the parking lot was a perimeter ringed with military vehicles, federal agents in riot gear, and a crowd of protesters who had spent the holiday weekend clashing with ICE over the right to see inside.
The strike began on Friday. Detainees stopped eating and working. Their demands, relayed through family members and advocates, include the release of young people, the elderly, and the medically vulnerable, plus an end to indefinite detention. Advocates say some detainees report spoiled food with live worms, air conditioning shut off in summer heat, and medical requests ignored for weeks.
ICE and GEO Group, the private contractor that runs the 1,000-bed facility under a 15-year contract worth roughly $1 billion, say none of this is happening.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin called Sherrill's attempted visit a "political stunt on Memorial Day." A department spokesperson said the facility provides "three meals a day, clean water, clothing, bedding, showers, soap, toiletries, medical and dental and mental health care, 24-hour emergency care, and phones." The same statement denied a hunger strike exists. ICE's own policy defines a hunger strike as refusing food for 72 hours, after which detainees are referred for medical evaluation. The claim of now six days would seem to clear that threshold.
Senator Andy Kim (D), who toured the facility Monday while Sherrill waited outside, came out with a different account. He said he saw a pregnant woman who had been denied OB-GYN care and suffered a miscarriage without medical attention and detainees coughing in overcrowded units. He reported being pepper-sprayed in the face while trying to de-escalate a confrontation between protesters and ICE agents.
The Department of Homeland Security later stated that "no individuals were directly struck by pepper ball projectiles," a formulation that does not explicitly address whether Kim inhaled chemical spray at close range.
The difference in access is structural. Kim is a federal lawmaker on the Homeland Security Committee; Sherrill is a state governor. Federal facilities answer to congressional oversight, not state executive authority. DHS viewed a governor's visit as a political spectacle to be blocked, while a senator's tour was permitted as institutional duty.
Sherrill noted the irony in her statement Monday, saying she had "never thought Delaney Hall should open" and, in her statement, also referenced a proposed GEO Group facility in Roxbury that she opposes.
The facility has generated friction since before it reopened. Formerly the Essex County Jail, it closed in 2017, sat dormant, then reactivated in 2025 under a GEO Group contract that quadruples New Jersey's immigrant detention capacity. The average daily population hit 807 by November 2025, up from 234 in September, according to state data. Ten percent of detainees have criminal records, a figure ICE uses to justify the operation. ICE did not provide charge breakdowns in response to Monday inquiries.
The record since reopening does not suggest smooth management. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested outside the gates in May 2025 while attempting to visit. Representative LaMonica McIver (D), whose 10th district includes Newark, faces federal charges alleging she assaulted agents during that same visit.
In June 2025, four detainees broke through an aluminum second-story wall, used mattresses and bedsheets to descend, and escaped; one was captured a month later in Los Angeles after a manhunt. In December, a 41-year-old Haitian man named Jean Wilson Brutus died after one day in custody. Witnesses said an ambulance carrying him was delayed at the facility gate for roughly five minutes while a van transporting new detainees was waved through. ICE's official death report timestamps the EMS departure but does not mention the gate delay. The medical examiner cited "suspected natural causes."
Sherrill's exclusion fits a pattern: the federal government controls the physical space, the information flow, and the narrative. ICE suspended all visitation Tuesday, citing "rioters" and "agitators" outside. Protesters say ICE deployed pepper spray, rubber bullets, and batons against a crowd that included elected officials. DHS says it was protecting order. The detainees inside, cut off from phones and tablets according to advocates, have only the hunger strike as leverage.
The strike is not abstract. Gabriela Soto, whose husband is detained inside, told CBS New York that he was transferred to the Elizabeth Detention Center after speaking to reporters: a move she called "kidnapping." Liliana Ramos said her husband signed the hunger strike letter because the food is "not edible."
These are single-source claims from family members, not independently verified. But the volume of consistent testimony across multiple families, plus the congressional observations from Kim, Menendez, and others who have toured the facility, suggests a systemic gap between DHS public statements and detainee experience.
Nationwide, the gap is documented. Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff's office identified 85 credible reports of medical neglect in ICE facilities between January and August 2025. The Department of Homeland Security's own inspector general found that inadequate medical care contributed to detainee deaths. A 2024 academic review of 233 facilities concluded that weak monitoring systems and poor basic services are endemic. These findings do not confirm conditions at Delaney Hall, but they establish a documented context for detainee allegations nationwide.
The hunger strike enters its sixth day with no resolution visible. Sherrill has no mechanism to force entry. The governor of New Jersey cannot inspect a federal detention center on state soil without federal permission. That permission was denied. What happens next depends on whether the strike expands, whether Congress escalates oversight, or whether the detainees' remaining leverage forces a response that political pressure has not.
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