By Tim Donohue
Let’s talk about Delaney Hall in Newark, NJ.
ICE signed a contract with GEO Group (a private prison operator) to manage Delaney Hall as an immigration detention center starting around 2011. This contract ran through 2017.
This fell squarely within the two terms of the Obama administration, which significantly expanded immigration enforcement and detention. National ICE detentions and deportations reached historic highs under Obama.
This time period also overlaps with Cory Booker’s time as Mayor of Newark.
In the past few weeks, Booker has called the operation at Delaney Hall (it’s the same contractor with the same mission) a “moral stain”, condemned the use of private contractors to run the facility and called for Delaney Hall to be shut down.
It’s interesting to note that a search of the Internet finds that when Booker was the Mayor of Newark, he never publicly criticized the ICE operations at Delaney Hall. In fact, there is no record of anyone in Newark city government at that time ever making a negative public comment about the use of Delaney Hall as an ICE detention center as Obama set records for deportations (averaging over 400,000 removals per year).
Again, same contractor. Same mission.
Curious, huh?
Another fun fact – Under the guidelines of the Obama Administration’s Secure Communities initiative, both the NJ State Police and the Newark PD cooperated fully with ICE in sharing information, crime data and fingerprint records with ICE, leading to thousands of illegal aliens being detained and processed for deportation at Delaney Hall.
The response of Newark officials this time around?
The facility reopened in 2025.
Almost immediately Booker and current Newark city officials organized, helped fund and supported protests at the facility that quickly turned violent.
The current Mayor, Ras Baraka, along with NJ Congresswoman LaMonica McIver were both arrested as protesters turned chaotic on May 9, 2025.
Again, same contractor. Same mission.
Same old hypocrisy.
How about cooperation with NJ law enforcement this time around in the effort to identify and remove dangerous criminal aliens?
Zero cooperation. Law enforcement ordered by elected Democrats to stand down or be punished and disciplined.
Again, same contractor. Same mission.
Same old hypocrisy.
It’s also interesting to note that in the current, corporate media coverage of the “mostly peaceful protests” at Delaney Hall, the prior history of its use for the exact same purpose during Obama Administration is never mentioned.
Erasing inconvenient history and replacing it with selective outrage is a daily practice for Democrats. Those enthralled with their mission to destroy Donald Trump will drink the kool-aid obediently and without question. Zero intellectual curiosity.
But…the more you know.
