Sally Pillay, a board member of the immigrants’ rights group First Friends of New Jersey and New York, said she was able to watch from the parking lot.
Standing outside a security gate at Delaney Hall in Newark, she watched as ICE officers took what she called plastic “shackles” from a bus parked near the entrance to the detention center and brought them inside.
”Twenty to thirty minutes later, I started seeing the detainees getting into the bus, shackles on their hands,” with the officers guiding them, said Pillay, adding that detainees likewise were loaded into a second bus and two vans.
Then the convoy pulled out, carrying what she believed to be more than 100 detainees through the gate headed south, in the direction of Newark Liberty International Airport.
Lawyers and advocates said Monday that immigrants are being moved out of the detention center in Newark where four detainees escaped last week, and noted that the moves will make legal representation and family visits difficult if not impossible.
Mustafa Cetin, a lawyer representing an Egyptian man originally held at Delaney Hall said Monday that his client had been moved to a detention facility in Jena, Louisiana, on Friday night, echoing what he has heard from fellow immigration lawyers since the escape.
“I’ve had other colleagues whose clients were transferred,” said Mustafa.
Mustafa noted that one positive thing about Delaney Hall’s controversial opening in May was that it facilitated face-to-face consultations with clients who might otherwise be held in Pennsylvania or other far off locations.
“It’s frustrating but not surprising,” said John Leschak, an immigration attorney based in Freehold, adding that five of his firm’s clients were transferred suddenly out of Delaney Hall this weekend. For several months, he said he and other attorneys have been largely in the dark about what’s going on with their clients who were detained there.
“At this point, giving us, attorneys, the runaround in this way amounts to, what I consider, an intentional and unconstitutional deprivation of counsel,” he said.
Leschak said his clients are now in detention centers in Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Pillay said those were some of the same locations that members of her group were told detainees had been moved to, in addition to Colorado.
Pillay said detainees’ families were doubly distressed by the exodus from Delaney Hall, whose opening helped facilitate a mass deportation promised by President Donald Trump, before their recent transfer to distant facilities put visits out of reach.
Leschak said the distance will only make communicating with detainees more difficult.
“I’ve had clients in detention centers in Louisiana in the past and I know how hard it is trying to talk to them, trying to schedule visits,” he said.
Thursday’s escape occurred after authorities and a lawyer for a detainee said a group of men pushed through a plaster-board wall on the building’s third floor, then scaled down to the ground using bedsheets. Authorities announced that two of the escapees had been apprehended as of Sunday.
The escape came a little over a month after Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested and charged with trespassing at Delaney Hall on May 9, though interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba dropped the charges 10 days later.
Baraka had arrived at Delaney Hall as three members of Congress were there to conduct a congressional oversight inspection. U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver and the two other members of Congress entered the secure area through a gate that had briefly opened for a vehicle, but Baraka was asked to got back out through the gate.
Overhearing talk of plans to arrest the mayor, McIver and the other lawmakers surrounded him, and a scuffle with immigration officers ensued. McIver has been charged with two counts of assaulting, resisting, or impeding federal officers, both involving physical contact while the officers were performing their official duties.
On Friday, U.S. Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., told reporters following a tour of Delaney Hall that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, would review operations at Delaney Hall, including with an eye toward a possible reduction in the number of detainees held their. The center is owned by the GEO Group of Boca Ratón, Florida, and operated under a contract with ICE.
A spokesman for the GEO Group did not respond to a request for comment.
An ICE regional spokesperson for New Jersey directed questions to its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security. DHS declined to address questions regarding any change in Delaney Hall’s detainee population, and instead referred to a statement it released Monday that was silent on the population issue but suggested that Delaney Hall would remain in operation.
“This privately held facility remains dedicated to providing high-quality services,” the statement read, “including around-the-clock access to medical care, in-person and virtual legal and family visitation, general and legal library access, translation services, dietician-approved meals, religious and specialty diets, recreational amenities, and opportunities for detainees to practice their religious beliefs.”
The statement contradicted accusations by advocates for detainees that conditions inside Delaney Hall included crowding to the point that detainees were sleeping on the floor, and poor and erratic meals.
Stories by Steve Strunsky
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Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com
Daysi Calavia-Robertson is a columnist who covers New Jersey’s diverse communities. You can reach her at dcalavia-robertson@njadvancemedia.com.