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| the chairs provided by volunteers |
Forgive me for going off-topic once more to report what I’ve witnessed at Delaney Hall, the immigration detention center in Newark, NJ, operated by Geo Group. I am a regular visitor to one young man detained at Delaney, as well as a member of the volunteer coalition that provides on-site services to visitors —particularly to mothers of babies and small children whose husbands and partners are detained inside.
My wife and I recently published an op-ed about the rich array of support services for detainees’ families provided immediately outside Delaney Hall by a coalition of volunteer organizations and individuals*. That’s a remarkable tale (I’m speaking as a foot soldier, not an organizer), but my focus here is on the experience of visitors when they go inside Delaney. Their treatment under Geo Group procedures is a mixture of systemic abuse and accommodation that I have often mused over. If the U.S. is transitioning to hard-core fascism (jury’s out, IMO). the visitor experience here is a peculiar halfway house.
The visiting set up run by Geo Group at Delaney is truly bizarre-- it has elements not only of cruelty and incredible inefficiency, but also humanity.
First of all, it's communal. When Essex County ran immigrant detention in Trump 1.0, visits were 1-on-1 behind glass. At Delaney, visits are in what feels like a giant lunchroom, with sometimes over 100 voices reverberating. There are five or six rows of long tables. Detainees sit on benches on one side; visitors face them. Lately the room has sometimes been packed, so that visitors are almost hip to hip (there can be up to four visitors per detainee).
