New Jersey Rep. Lamonica Mciver Returns To Ice Facility After Assault Charges To Push For Its Closure

NEWARK, New Jersey — More than six months after a chaotic visit to a New Jersey immigrant detention center that resulted in federal assault charges against Rep. LaMonica McIver, she and her colleagues returned to the facility to advocate for its closure.

McIver, along with Reps. Rob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), toured Delaney Hall on Tuesday for another oversight visit. That came days after Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced that Jean Wilson Brutus, a 41-year-old from Haiti who was detained at Delaney Hall, died a day after the agency took him into custody.

The visit was the first for McIver since May, when she, along with Menendez and Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.), sought to conduct an oversight visit that turned into a high-profile scrum: Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested and McIver was charged with assaulting law enforcement officers. Baraka’s charge was dismissed, while McIver’s case has yet to go to trial; she has pleaded not guilty and accused the Trump administration of “political intimidation.”

McIver — a first-term member of Congress whose district encompasses Newark — told reporters Tuesday that she was the one who was assaulted and that the facility should be shut down. She added that being back at Delaney Hall was “traumatic” but that she will “continue to show up to call out what is happening in this facility.”

“We're going to continue to say that this facility should not be open,” McIver said. “When we left out of there, a detainee told us, ‘This is not the America that we dreamed of.’”

As the first immigration detention center to be opened under the second Trump administration, Delaney Hall has had a prominent role in the local and national debate over immigration policy. Democrats have been outspoken against the facility, which is run by the private prison company GEO Group, and calls to shut it down have intensified after the recent detainee death.

The GEO Group has a $1 billion contract with the federal government to hold up to 1,000 detainees in the location. Menendez described the facility as nearing capacity — claiming there are currently 952 detainees there without commensurate staff. He told reporters that a detainee described the facility as a “slaughterhouse.”

Menendez added that detainees they met with are “not receiving adequate medical attention” and the “food situation continues to be horrible.” Concerns have emerged about improper conditions at the facility, and earlier this year four detainees escaped amid unrest.

Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that claims the facility was understaffed are “false,” adding that detainees at all facilities are given health screenings in the first 12 hours of visiting, a subsequent check-up and 24-hour emergency care.

“ICE is regularly audited and inspected by external agencies to ensure that all ICE facilities comply with performance-based national detention standards,” McLaughlin said. “This is the best healthcare that many aliens have received in their entire lives.”

After Tuesday’s visit, Menendez also said that the lawmakers “asked questions about what happened” to Brutus and were told that “there’s an investigation underway.” ICE last week said that Brutus died “from suspected natural causes.”

“It should enrage every American that we've allowed this administration to take advantage of a broken immigration system — and that's what they are doing, for profit,” Menendez said.

Clarke, the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, expressed concern about “four reported deaths in ICE facilities in the past week alone, a record number since this administration took power.”

“It is an insult to call this incident isolated,” Clarke said.

McLaughlin earlier this week pushed back on Democrats’ assertion that this is the “deadliest year in ICE detention since the early 2000s,” writing on X that there has been “NO spike in deaths” and “as bed space has rapidly expanded, we have maintained higher standard of care than most prisons that hold U.S. citizens.”

Democratic Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill, whose administration begins in just a few weeks, said in a statement after the report of Brutus’ death that she has “long opposed — and continue[s] to oppose — the use of Delaney Hall and similar for-profit detention centers because they do not make us safer.”