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One of the reasons for the hunger strike at ICE’s Delaney Hall in New Jersey is the food itself.
Detainees at the Newark immigrant detention facility say they are refusing meals not only to draw attention to the miserable conditions inside, but because the meals themselves are one of those miseries. They describe spoiled and expired food, sometimes containing live worms, as one form of inhumane treatment, alongside inadequate medical care, unsanitary housing, and complaints about ignored due process rights. Detainees have also refused work assignments as part of the strike, according to advocates and participants who have spoken to the press.
On the other side of the walls, tensions came to a head Monday as federal officers in tactical gear fired pepper spray and pepper balls at demonstrators who had gathered outside the facility, reportedly striking U.S. Sen. Andy Kim.
Federal officials have sent mixed messages about the strike. On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security said on social media there was “NO HUNGER STRIKE” at Delaney Hall, but later, White House “border czar” Tom Homan said that strikers would be force-fed “if it gets bad enough.”
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin split the difference on Wednesday, arguing that there were “only a handful of individuals” refusing to eat and that it was only because they wanted their “ethnic right food,” ABC News reported.
Mullin continued: “Well, they can go back to their country and get whatever food they want.”
People in detention can, in fact, give up their due process rights and asylum claims and voluntarily elect to leave the country. This has been an important part of the Trump administration’s plan for scaling up mass deportations, as involuntary deportation is expensive and time-consuming. But the decision isn’t that simple for many people in immigration detention.
As the Arizona Daily Star reported this week, some detainees say returning to their home countries could expose them to persecution, imprisonment or death. The paper described an openly gay Russian man, an Afghan with ties to the former U.S.-backed government and an Iranian dissident, all of whom expressed fears for their personal safety if deported. All three described the misuse and overuse of solitary confinement at the Eloy Detention Center in Arizona as a tool to coerce detainees into abandoning their immigration claims and leaving the country voluntarily.
Another detainee in Arizona told the paper that a guard told him, “It’s part of my job. I have to make your life miserable so that you request your own deportation.”
DHS and CoreCivic, which runs the facility, denied that detainees were held in segregation (the official term both use to describe isolation) to pressure them into voluntary departure. But the administration has had remarkable success in convincing more people to agree to leave in recent months.
Nationwide, voluntary departure agreements are up sevenfold during the first 16 months of the Trump administration, compared with the 16 months prior, according to a Stateline analysis. These agreements require the detainee to pay for the trip, leaving them subject to fines for any delay. This is very different from the self-deportation program through DHS that advertises it will provide undocumented people with a free flight and a $2,600 stipend to leave.
People who accept voluntary departure can typically avoid a court order of removal, however. That order makes it nearly impossible to legally return to the U.S. for residency in the future.
Historically, most immigrants arrested inside the U.S. could ask an immigration judge for bond and fight their cases from outside of detention. The Trump administration effectively closed that door in July of last year, ordering that immigrants who arrived in the U.S. illegally were no longer eligible for bond. While many judges and several appeals court decisions have challenged the constitutionality of that rule, it has widened the funnel of people into detention centers in tandem with the Laken Riley Act, the 2025 legislation that required the detention of immigrants suspected of several minor crimes.
The net effect is more people entering detention, and far more pressure on the facilities holding them. CNN reported earlier this month that nearly 50 people have died in ICE custody since Trump returned to office, with 2025 marking the highest number of in-custody deaths in at least two decades, and 2026 on pace to be worse. Many of those deaths were preventable, CNN found, citing autopsy reports, court records, interviews with detainees and experts, and evidence that medical staffing did not keep pace as populations rose.
The deaths also include a rising number of suicides. This week, The Associated Press reported that at least 10 ICE detainees have died by suicide since January 2025. ICE has typically recorded one or no suicide deaths annually throughout its 23-year history, AP reported.
Amid desperate conditions in detention, hunger strikes have been one of the few tools left for people inside. Immigrant rights groups have reported hunger strikes in recent weeks beyond Delaney Hall, in places like Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania, and Adelanto ICE Processing Center in Southern California.
State and local officials in all three states have experimented with the few levers available to try to change conditions inside. In Newark, where Delaney Hall is, Mayor Ras Baraka has requested an independent inspection by the state Department of Health to ensure safety standards, and he has also asked Gov. Mikie Sherrill to empower the state attorney general to investigate the facility.
In California, Attorney General Rob Bonta has been investigating Adelanto and other detention centers for months, releasing the fifth in a series of reports earlier in May. In it, detainees recounted being served only beans and bread, gastrointestinal illness from the food, extreme cold temperatures, a lack of toilets, and other conditions that Bonta described as “cruel, inhumane, and unacceptable.”
State lawmakers in California this week advanced a bill that would expand the attorney general’s ability to investigate and report on conditions inside detention facilities. This comes after movement on another bill last week that would tax private prison companies at 50% of their profits.
In Pennsylvania, commissioners for Clearfield County — where the Moshannon center is located — are exploring their leverage as the contractual “middleman” between ICE and the private prison company that operates the facility. The current contract expires in September, and PennLive reported that commissioners are considering adding language that would increase transparency and oversight of the center. “There’s no reason we can’t put conditions in there,” Commissioner Dave Glass told the paper.
