Delaney Hall, located in Newark next to the Essex County Jail, was used to house immigrant detainees between 2011 and 2017. (Photo by New Jersey Monitor)
A private prison company wants a federal judge to rule again that New Jersey’s law banning immigrant detention centers is unconstitutional so it can open a new immigration detention prison in Newark, court records show.
The GEO Group, one of the largest private prison companies in the country, wants to contract with U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement to house up to 600 immigrant detainees at a detention center it owns in Newark, next to the Essex County Jail.
But state law – deemed partially unconstitutional by a federal judge in 2023 — could stop ICE from entering into the contract, the company’s lawyers say in a new federal lawsuit against Gov. Phil Murphy and Attorney General Matt Platkin.
The law “unlawfully discriminates against GEO in its capacity as a contractor for the federal government because it caters to privately contracted immigration detention services, an area under federal control, while New Jersey law prohibits other forms of privately contracted detention services for non-federal purposes allows. ” the complaint saysfiled on April 15.
Newark’s Delaney Hall detention center was used to house immigrant detainees between 2011 and 2017, the complaint said. Essex County incarcerated some of its jail population until last year.
Gov. Phil Murphy signed the law banning immigrant prisons in August 2021after immigrant advocates spent years protesting contracts that allowed ICE to house immigrant detainees in public prisons in To put away, EssexAnd Hudson provinces. Essex announced it would no longer house inmates days before Murphy signed the bill into law, and Bergen and Hudson followed suit shortly after.
CoreCivic, a private company that has contracted with ICE to house immigrant detainees at Elizabeth Prison, indicted New Jersey last year about the law, calling it unconstitutional. In August, a federal judge sided with CoreCivic, saying the company could continue housing inmates at its facility (the state has appealed).
Amy Torres, executive director of the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, has long advocated for the closure of immigrant detention centers. She noted that GEO Group claims its potential contract with ICE would be worth more than $100 million.
“That’s so much bigger than we’ve ever seen in New Jersey,” Torres said. “It is so concerning to see this private prison company saying there is demand for a contract worth over $100 million. It’s absolutely wild.”
In 2018, Essex County charged ICE about $35 million to house detainees at the jail, Bergen received nearly $17 million and Hudson $27 million.
Geoffrey Brounell and Scott Schipma, attorneys representing GEO Group, did not respond to a request for comment.
The attorneys make the same arguments in their April 15 complaint as CoreCivic did in its lawsuit: that the New Jersey law violates the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says state laws cannot override federal statutes.
“It frustrates Congress’s delegation of discretionary authority to ICE to discharge its constitutional and statutory responsibilities, and impermissibly regulates the federal government’s contract decisions by effectively limiting the federal government’s determination of which immigration detention facilities are “appropriate.” are replaceable,” the complaint states.
The same judge who heard the CoreCivic case – U.S. District Judge Robert Kirsch – will hear GEO Group’s complaint. GEO Group notes that Kirsch said at a hearing in the earlier case that this would be the case “catastrophic” if states were to implement laws closing immigration detention centers.
Torres understands why North Jersey remains a prime location for ICE to house detainees — it’s close to Manhattan’s immigration courts and Newark airport — so she wasn’t surprised to see another legal challenge arise. But she emphasized her “bitter disappointment.”
“It is an industry that New Jersey legislators and New Jerseyans themselves are against and in which we do not want to play any role. It is shocking to see this happening so quickly after the CoreCivic challenge and on the scale they suggest,” she said.
The Public Prosecution Service declined to comment on the lawsuit. A spokeswoman for the Murphy administration did not respond to a request for comment.
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