Dozens of women detained inside the Delaney Hall immigration detention facility in New Jersey announced their participation in a hunger and labor strike, advocates announced on Thursday.
The women, detained in unit 1 of the contentious privately run facility, also released a new list of demands. They are calling on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to release women under 21, women with medical conditions and mothers. They are also demanding improved conditions inside the facility and for their immigration cases to proceed more quickly.
The Delaney Hall detention facility, run by the private prison company Geo Group, has in recent weeks become a flashpoint in the Trump administration’s efforts to engage in mass deportations. A group of over 300 men launched a hunger and labor strike last month, leading to demonstrations in support of the strikers and an aggressive police response.
The announcement that detained women in Delaney Hall were engaging in a strike came just one day after Trump signed a $70bn spending bill for immigration enforcement agencies and as immigrants in other detention centers participate in strikes of their own.
On Thursday morning, advocates, religious leaders and family members with detained loved ones gathered in front of the Delaney Hall facility to announce nearly 40 women were signing on to the strike. A series of speakers decried the conditions inside.
“Today, we stand with the women demanding release, safe living conditions, medical care, legal representation, family visitation, safe drinking water and protection from abuse,” said Archange Antoine, a minister with the Clergy Coalition for Liberation. “These are not radical demands – these are demands rooted in basic human rights.”
On 22 May, a group of detained men inside Delaney Hall announced a hunger and labor strike, making a list of demands including meeting with the New Jersey state governor, improved conditions, the release of sick and elderly detainees and for their cases to proceed in immigration court. At the time, a few women inside the facility joined in that effort, advocates told the Guardian.
Soon after the 22 May strike was announced, protesters outside the facility gathered in support of the striking detainees. Lawmakers have also come out in support of the striking detainees and to conduct oversight visits.
ICE officers responded to the protests by deploying pepper spray and using Tasers and batons. But later, amid national attention on the heated protests, New Jersey’s governor and Newark’s mayor deployed the state and local police forces who deployed teargas and arrested dozens in an effort to disperse the protesters.
After the detained immigrants’ strike began, advocates and detainees have claimed that ICE and Geo Group have retaliated against them by canceling family visitations, removing communication tablets from units and transferring detainees to other facilities. Advocates estimate about 90 people were transferred to other detention centers this week.
“We know that engaging in a strike is really hard,” said Catalina Adorno, a volunteer with Cosecha, an immigrant rights organization in New Jersey. “Not just because of what it does to the physical body, but also because we have seen that the guards and that ICE are retaliating against the strikers.”
The Delaney Hall facility opened last year after ICE signed a billion-dollar contract for 15 years with Geo Group. Since its opening, it has faced repeated accusations of substandard medical care, inedible food and neglectful guards. Multiple oversight visits by members of Congress have found conditions at the facility to match claims by detainees, according to the lawmakers’ accounts.
“We all want our family members home,” a woman, whose husband has been detained in Delaney for two months, said on Thursday. She requested anonymity for fear of retaliation by ICE. “He’s not a criminal. He sacrifices himself every day for his family and for his home.”
Amid the strike and protests, two 18-year-old women detained inside Delaney were released, along with all pregnant women, which advocates celebrated as a win.
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) denied that a hunger strike is taking place at Delaney Hall.
“Another day, another hoax about ICE,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement. “There is no hunger strike at Delaney Hall at this time. No detainees are being beaten or abused.”
“All detainees are provided with three meals a day, clean water, clothing, bedding, showers, soap, and toiletries,” the statement continues. “It is a longstanding practice to provide comprehensive medical care from the moment an alien enters ICE custody.”
The DHS statement also encouraged undocumented immigrants to self-deport.
Geo Group did not respond to a request for comment by time of publication.
When the first hunger strike began on 22 May, a group of women detained inside the facility also wrote a letter to the public, denouncing the conditions inside. The letter was published this week by advocacy groups.
“Most of the women detained at this center were illegally detained by ICE,” the letter reads. “We were taken at the entrances of our immigration court check-ins, at our jobs, taking our kids to school.”
“The treatment we received from this center is deplorable from screams, racism, and bad medical attention,” the letter adds.
Other hunger strikes have been taking place at different facilities around the US. In California, detained immigrants inside the Adelanto detention center and the nearby Desert View Annex are currently engaged in a strike. DHS is denying that a hunger strike is taking place, but advocates claim that striking detainees have faced retaliation.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the Northwest detention center in Washington state has had nine separate strikes since 2026 began. Similarly, immigrants inside other detention centers, including in Texas, in Pennsylvania and in Michigan, have launched hunger strikes since mid-April, the ACLU reports.
