Third Death at ICE's Delaney Hall and Tacoma Hunger Strike Renew Calls to End Private Detention
Should the federal government end contracts with private companies like GEO Group that run ICE detention facilities? A third detainee has died in connection with Delaney Hall, the privately run ICE facility in Newark, New Jersey, reigniting calls to shut it down. Jose Chajon Raxon, a Guatemalan national, suffered what medical staff believed was a seizure on July 19, one day after he was booked into the facility. He was taken to University Hospital and later released from ICE custody, according to the Department of Homeland Security, which took roughly two weeks to confirm his death to Rep. Rob Menendez even though it had happened weeks earlier. ICE said it wasn't required to report the death under a newer policy that exempts deaths occurring within 30 days of a detainee's release from custody. Chajon Raxon's death follows that of Edwin Lopez-Cornejo, a 41-year-old Salvadoran man who died at the same hospital on August 1, and Jean Wilson Brutus, a Haitian detainee who died a day after arriving at Delaney Hall in December. Sen. Cory Booker has introduced the Delaney Hall Closure Act, calling for the facility to shut within 90 days.
At the same time, more than 140 detainees at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington entered a hunger strike on August 11, the 20th such action at the facility this year, according to the advocacy group La Resistencia. Detainees say the strike is meant to draw attention to untreated injuries, including broken and dislocated bones. Reps. Maxine Dexter and Emily Randall toured the facility over the weekend and said staff denied them access to the medical wing and gave conflicting answers about how many detainees were actually participating. Both Delaney Hall and the Tacoma facility, which holds more than 1,450 people, are run by the for-profit contractor GEO Group, which operates more than a dozen ICE detention centers nationwide.
What supporters say:
ICE and DHS maintain Chajon Raxon was medically evaluated and formally released from custody before his death, and say the agency followed its own reporting rules for deaths occurring after release.
GEO Group and detention officials dispute the scale of the Tacoma strike, saying a detainee isn't officially counted as striking until nine consecutive meals have gone uneaten.
Backers of the private contracting model argue it lets ICE scale detention capacity quickly to match enforcement priorities without the cost and delay of building new federal facilities.
What critics say:
Rep. Analilia Mejia, who has toured Delaney Hall and the nearby Elizabeth Detention Center, says detainees are routinely denied medication and timely care, calling it medical abuse.
Sen. Cory Booker argues GEO Group's private ICE contracts create no real accountability and has pushed legislation for years to end the use of private prisons for immigration detention.
Advocacy groups like La Resistencia say hunger strikes have become one of the only tools detainees have to force attention to injuries and conditions that go unaddressed for weeks at a time.
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#ICE #DelaneyHall #GEOGroup #ImmigrationDetention #PrivatePrisons
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