DHS Can’t Decide If There’s a Hunger Strike Going on at a New Jersey Detention Center

Federal officials can’t get their story straight on whether there is a hunger strike going on at an immigration detention center in New Jersey.

New Jersey activist groups say hundreds of detainees inside Delaney Hall, a privately operated Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Newark, launched a hunger strike over Memorial Day weekend to protest insufficient and spoiled food, medical neglect, poor living conditions, and abuse. The allegations have led to daily protests and violent skirmishes outside the detention center. The Guardian reported on Saturday that the hunger strike was entering its ninth day.

But the government’s position on the hunger strike has shifted between claiming it doesn’t exist, to threatening to force-feed the nonexistent strikers, to claiming there was only a handful of detainees on hunger strike.

Last Tuesday, an official Department of Homeland Security (DHS) social media account posted that there was “NO HUNGER STRIKE” at Delaney Hall. This response was not surprising. There have been multiple reports of hunger strikes at various DHS detention centers, but the DHS has denied all of them.

But White House border czar Tom Homan said in an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham that same day that strikers would be force-fed “if it gets bad enough.”

“And matter of fact, if it gets bad enough and the prisoners feel like they’re putting themselves in extreme danger, medical danger, then we’ll force-feed them,” Homan said. “We will get a court order and force-feed them.”

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin added to the confusion on Wednesday when he said during a meeting of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet that there were “only a handful of individuals” refusing to eat and that it was only because they wanted their “ethnic right food.”

“They can go back to their country and get whatever food they want,” Mullin continued.

The immigrant advocacy group Cosecha published a handwritten letter reportedly signed by nearly 300 Delaney detainees. The letter said that the signees have witnessed individuals with “illnesses such as HIV, cancer, diabetes, heart problems, among others, who are not receiving proper medical attention for the aforementioned conditions.”

“It is public knowledge that agents have arrested individuals with physical limitations such as deaf, mute, blind individuals, elderly persons, and even pregnant women,” the letter continued. “We see young people with approved juvenile status cases, with whom we are living in detention centers. There is also a high spread of COVID-19 in detention centers, and the flu is constant among detainees, which could lead to outbreaks of illnesses or epidemics.”

Lawyers for the detainees also pushed back against Mullin’s claim that their dispute was over food preference, rather than food edibility.

“Many detainees have been subjected to having worms in their food, and I wouldn’t say, as Mr. Mullin stated, that is an ‘ethnic’ choice of food,” Alex Minogue, an attorney at Nova Law Group who represents detainees being held at Delaney Hall, told CNN Saturday. “I think they just don’t want to eat worms.”

On Saturday, the DHS published a press release claiming to debunk “categorically false smears” about Delaney Hall being spread by “sanctuary politicians,” which presumably doesn’t include Homan and Mullin. The press release said there was no hunger strike at Delaney Hall, nor was there any medical neglect or lack of nutrition.

“No lawbreakers in the history of human civilization have been better treated than illegal aliens,” DHS Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said in the statement. “They are provided 3 meals a day, medical care, and receive full due process.”

A medical examiner’s report recently concluded that an ICE detainee in Arizona died from complications from a severe tooth infection.

The DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.