Nearly 300 Delaney Hall detainees call attention to plight in letter

• The letter, "S.O.S: A Second Letter From Delaney Hall," was signed by 288 detainees and released to the public on May 12.
• The letter was released one day after New Jersey Congress members Nellie Pou and Rob Menendez paid a visit to Delaney Hall.

Detainees at the Newark immigrant detention center, Delaney Hall, have managed for the second time in three months to get a letter out of the facility detailing their struggles and frustrations.

The new letter, "S.O.S: A Second Letter From Delaney Hall," released May 12, alleges widespread issues including medical neglect, arbitrary ICE arrests, public health risks, and the devastating effect detention has on families.

“Families are being destroyed and separated, where there are children, nieces, and minors who are suffering a very strong psychological impact because they do not understand the situation, and in some cases they have witnessed the arrests of their relatives, who have been struck by tragedy and the economic burden, since in most cases we are the heads of households," the letter states.

NorthJersey.com contacted the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement for comment on the letter, but did not receive a response.

The letter was signed by 288 detainees, according to Kathy O'Leary, regional coordinator for Pax Christi New Jersey, a chapter of the international Catholic peace organization. O'Leary, Jenny Garcia of the American Friends Service Committee, and Sally Pillay of the Mami Chelo Foundation were all recipients of the letter. They received the letter at the end of March and helped get it translated from Spanish to English.

This letter follows one released in February, "El Grito de Nosotros — Our Cry: A letter from inside Delaney Hall," which detailed how detainees had gotten sick with the flu, stress, fever, and general body aches, and how ICE agents have arrested those who are most vulnerable and placed them in overcrowded facilities like Delaney Hall.

O'Leary, who is part of the grassroots coalition Eyes on ICE NJ, did not give exact details of how the new letter was smuggled out, but said the lead signer of the letter was an Ecuadorian man named Brian, who has been detained at Delaney Hall for 10 months, and was someone with whom members of Eyes on ICE NJ had interacted before. Both O'Leary and Pillay vouched for the validity of the letter based on past conversations and dealings with Brian and other signees, as well as their family members and lawyers.

O'Leary said what was interesting to her was that more detainees signed on to the recent letter compared to the first letter, which had 25 signatures. Especially as detainees are kept in various units in the facility that are under strict lockdown.

"They had to get it between units ... and the fact that they did the first letter, and now they are continuing to organize, I think it's noteworthy," O'Leary said in an interview with NorthJersey.com. "That this is a very organized group of folks inside a detention facility who are trying to free themselves."

The 1,196-bed Delaney Hall, located in an industrial area on the outskirts of Newark, opened on May 1, 2025, and has a daily population of 908 detainees, according to federal data collected by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. Since then, detainees have complained about substandard health conditions and food. The facility also reported its first death when Jean Wilson Brutus, a 41-year-old Haitian national detained at the facility, died there in December.

The letter was released one day after New Jersey Reps. Nellie Pou and Rob Menendez paid a visit to Delaney Hall. Pou found out from Delaney Hall officials that there were 680 detainees held at the facility on the day of the visit. Meanwhile, Menendez found that the food and water quality were as poor as in previous visits and that the continuing substandard conditions served the purpose of forcing detainees to sign voluntary departure papers to no longer stay at Delaney Hall.

"This letter from individuals detained at Delaney Hall confirms what we have heard during each one of our visits and why we have always fought to close these facilities," Menendez said in a statement on May 15 about the letter. "And it is exactly why the Trump Administration has gone to extreme lengths to try to prevent us from conducting oversight. What is happening inside Delaney Hall and detention centers across the country would shock the conscience of every American if they had visibility into what is happening on their dime. This is why we are fighting with everything we have to bring the truth about these facilities to light, to hold this Administration accountable and to end this national nightmare.”

Sending out an SOS

The new letter from Delaney Hall detainees is five pages long, a page longer than the one in February. But there are similarities between the two letters.

The February letter starts with the detainees apologizing for how they entered the U.S., but with an explanation that they "were experiencing safety circumstances that endangered our lives and the lives of some members of our family" in their home countries. The recent letter starts with similar language.

The new letter also resembles the previous letter in detailing specifically how detainees have gotten sick with the flu, stress, fever, and general body aches, and the concern that it could lead to an outbreak in Delaney Hall. It also discusses how ICE agents have arrested those who are most vulnerable and placed them in overcrowded facilities like Delaney Hall, such as those with mental health issues, people who are deaf and non-verbal, elderly individuals, and juveniles.

Pillay said the language in the two letters was similar because the lead signer, Brian, was responsible for writing both letters as well as leading the effort to get signatures. She said the month-long delay in making the letter public was due to not only getting the letter translated but also meeting with Brian and some of the signees in the facility before it was made public.

"We needed to hear from these individuals themselves," Pillay said. "Getting a more formal consent. Hearing from them verbally consenting that this is what you want advocates to do."

Where the second letter significantly differs from the first letter is the naming of federal immigration judges Shana Chen, Joshua Hawkes, and Ramin Rastegar, singling them out for their conduct on the bench, where they have "more than 40 hearings to review and study how due process should be applied, yet within minutes they make final decisions issuing deportations and expulsions." Chen and Rastegar serve as judges in the federal immigrant court in Newark. Hawkes previously served as a temporary judge in the immigrant court in Orlando, Florida.

A copy of the recent letter posted online, unlike the earlier one, shows the countries the detainees are originally from, including Ecuador, Guatemala, and Mexico, as well as Turkey, Kenya, and Afghanistan.

O'Leary, Garcia, and Pillay said in a joint statement that the letter shows how the "voices of nearly 300 detained individuals are now impossible to ignore. Their urgent SOS is a call not only for justice, but for immediate action."

Ricardo Kaulessar covers race, immigration, and culture for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: [email protected]

Twitter/X: @ricardokaul