{"id":402,"date":"2026-06-05T10:39:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T10:39:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=402"},"modified":"2026-06-05T10:39:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T10:39:17","slug":"the-delaney-hall-strikers-are-hitting-geo-group-where-it-hurts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=402","title":{"rendered":"The Delaney Hall Strikers Are Hitting GEO Group Where It Hurts"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It has now <\/span>been<\/span> almost two weeks since the laborers keeping ICE\u2019s Delaney Hall mega-jail open went on strike\u2014demanding a chance to speak with New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill, reviews of their cases, and ultimately, their freedom. Those workers are the detainees themselves, who serve as custodians, line cooks, hairdressers, laundry workers, and janitors at the Newark prison-turned-detention center where a thousand people are trapped in DHS custody, working for wages as low as a dollar per day.<\/p>

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What began as a simultaneous hunger and labor strike has become largely a labor struggle, organizers with the immigrant rights group Cosecha New Jersey told me. That strike, according to a letter signed by 46 detained people and published June 3, is near-unanimous and ongoing: \u201cpeople detained have all voluntarily stopped working and assisting with facility operations,\u201d they wrote in a May 31 letter titled \u201cWe Demand Freedom.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The for-profit firm GEO Group, ICE\u2019s largest private contractor and Delaney Hall\u2019s operator, runs what it calls a \u201cvoluntary work program\u201d that in effect keeps the center operating, described in a recent GEO Group detainee handbook reviewed by Mother Jones<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAny resident assigned to work in the kitchen will be paid $4.00 per day,\u201d the handbook says. That\u2019s the highest wage anyone gets: \u201cLaundry Work Details and Barbershop Workers will be paid $3.00 per day. Special Work Details are paid $2.00 per day. All other job assignments are $1.00 per day. Ordinarily you will not be permitted to work more than eight hours per day or 40 hours per week.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The document also lists the cost of a pair of shoes at GEO Group\u2019s commissary: $24.28, equivalent to several weeks\u2019 wages. A blanket costs eight dollars. ID cards, which detained people must pay to replace if damaged, cost $5 each, or a full week\u2019s pay.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While the work program is labeled as voluntary, \u201cencouraging others to participate in a work stoppage or to refuse to work\u201d is listed in the detainee handbook as a \u201chigh offense,\u201d punishable by disciplinary transfer, isolation, or initiating criminal proceedings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEngaging in, or inciting a group demonstration\u201d is also a \u201chigh offense\u201d and \u201cprohibited act.\u201d And, the detained strikers wrote in their June 3 letter, they have been \u201csubjected to reprisals, discrimination, mockery, mistreatment, and threats\u201d since their strike began.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are trying to force us to work in all areas of the facility (cleaning, kitchen, maintenance, laundry, floor polishing)\u201d they wrote, adding that GEO Group staffers threaten \u201cto deport us, transfer us to punishment units, and move us from one detention center to another\u201d if they refuse to work. \u201cThey tell us we have no rights here.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t have cleaning staff, they don\u2019t have kitchen staff,\u201d said Cat Adorno, an organizer with Cosecha. \u201cThose jobs, the detainees are the ones that do that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re hearing that the place is becoming really dirty, that it started to smell like feces, that the guards have become incredibly aggressive, threatening them that if they don\u2019t resume their work, they\u2019re going to get transferred or get additional charges,\u201d Adorno added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The profit margins of facilities like Delaney Hall depend on coercing people into working for otherwise illegal rates, Andrew Free, an immigration lawyer and journalist who researches conditions in ICE detention, said. \u201cThe way you keep the place clean is you use the people who are inside to clean it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

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Those dollar-a-day rates have held since 1950, when they were established by Congress. It was keyed to the \u201cinternational standard for prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions, which was three Swiss francs.\u201d \u00a0Since then, several courts have ruled that the Fair Labor Standards Act, which sets the federal minimum wage, does not apply to people detained by ICE. But the legal battle isn\u2019t over: there are now more than a dozen lawsuits making their way through the courts regarding involuntary work for unjust pay in ICE detention.<\/p>\n

GEO Group staffers did not answer questions about the strike, or about whether Delaney Hall cleaning and kitchen staff can sustain the facility without the labor of detained people.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/strong>In all instances, our support services are monitored by ICE, including by on-site agency personnel\u2026to ensure compliance with ICE\u2019s detention standards and contract requirements,\u201d a GEO Group spokesperson wrote in a statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For more than a year, a group of union activists calling itself \u201cLabor Eyes On ICE\u201d has held monthly vigils at Delaney Hall\u2014and on Sunday, members of at least 12 unions, including the Teamsters and the American Federation of Teachers, picketed on a dusty road just under half a mile from the building, prevented from getting within detainees\u2019 earshot by barricades and lines of police.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Teachers and librarians showed up to chant and picket, as did Amazon warehouse workers and university clerical staff. In a nearby tent, masked medics wearing red-tape crosses on their arms handed out goggles to protect people from tear gas\u2014and told me quietly that in their day-to-day lives, many of them are unionized medical professionals.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mitch Israel, an organizer with the Teamsters at Amazon, had the ties between that company and ICE on his mind outside Delaney Hall this week: \u201cAmazon actually loses money on its package delivering business most years,\u201d he said, \u201cand it funds that by using its cloud computing platform, Amazon Web Services, to get huge contracts with ICE, with Palantir, and other groups that allow it to fund its abuse of workers. There is a direct connection between these things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis fight actually goes beyond Delaney Hall and back to our employers and our workplaces,\u201d said Isaac Jimenez, a member of the administrative workers\u2019 union at Rutgers University. At his employer, students, staff and faculty \u201chave been calling for a sanctuary campus for over a year.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re supporting and uplifting the demands of the striking detainees and calling for this place to be shut down, calling on our governor, Mikie Sherrill, to meet with the strikers, and to help shut this place down as well,\u201d Jimenez added. \u201cI know it\u2019s only really gotten to a head in the past 10 days, but this movement\u2019s been growing for over a year, since Delaney Hall\u2019s been reopened.\u201d\u00a0On Thursday, 13 days into the strike, Sherrill announced a $12 million increase in funding for legal services\u2014enough to fund legal aid for \u201call low-income detainees in Delaney Hall.\u201d<\/p>\n

By withholding their labor, Free said, detained people \u201care in a real way hitting GEO where it hurts.\u201d They are undermining the company\u2019s revenue, \u201cwhich is why the repression is so harsh.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s generally cheaper to let people go than to transfer strikers to different facilities, Free said. So when some detained people are released\u2014like an 18-year-old who was freed from Delaney Hall earlier this week after missing her high school prom\u2014\u201cthat is just as much a predictable consequence of these hunger and labor strikes as the repression and retaliation.\u201d<\/p>

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There\u2019s a lot of profit in paying immigrants a dollar a day to run their own jail\u2014until they refuse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":400,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Delaney Hall Strikers Are Hitting GEO Group Where It Hurts - Moving and Mortgage Hub<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=402\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Delaney Hall Strikers Are Hitting GEO Group Where It Hurts - Moving and Mortgage Hub\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There\u2019s a lot of profit in paying immigrants a dollar a day to run their own jail\u2014until they refuse.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=402\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Moving and Mortgage Hub\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-05T10:39:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/39708fc2f934c4423e84ff62d08db77c.webp\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1125\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/webp\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=402#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=402\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/6b7c79bcfd888d98f34c5413df7e81a2\"},\"headline\":\"The Delaney Hall Strikers Are Hitting GEO Group Where It Hurts\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-05T10:39:17+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=402\"},\"wordCount\":1195,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=402#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/8f9bb8243ad7570674d911d4df80b34d.webp\",\"articleSection\":[\"Politics\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=402#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=402\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=402\",\"name\":\"The Delaney Hall Strikers Are Hitting GEO Group Where It Hurts - 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