Hunger Strikes Over Abuse, Inhumane ICE Conditions Spread To At Least Four States

One Baptist minister said that in his nearly ten years of visiting detained immigrants, the past year “has been the worst.”

GEO Group’s Adelanto ICE Processing Center.

The ongoing abuses at the GEO Group-operated Delaney Hall private prison in New Jersey are not an aberration. Hundreds of immigrants detained in at least four other private detention facilities – all operated by the same private prison profiteer – have also launched hunger strikes in past weeks in protest of inhumane conditions and due process violations, including denying individuals access to attorneys, adequate medical and mental health care, and safe food and water. The administration has inexplicably been denying these strikes are even happening while also threatening to force-feed detained individuals, as Reason notes.

“Trump’s cruel mass detention expansion is exacerbating the inhumane conditions that are inherent to ICE’s detention system and have been well documented for decades,” Detention Watch Network said. “Over the past year, there have been increasing reports of death, medical neglect, use of force, isolation, retaliation, overcrowding, lack of food, and rampant transfers that cut people off from their loved ones and support networks. A shocking 18 people have died in ICE custody this calendar year — and 49 people total have died under this administration.”

In the Golden State, at least 120 immigrants detained at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center and the Desert View Annex – both operated by GEO Group – have been striking over conditions so unbearable that one individual has attempted suicide.

“They say they are facing emotional and psychological distress from a prolonged and unconstitutional, indefinite detention,” L.A. Taco reports. “They write that the food they eat is unfit to serve as animal feed. They say that they go weeks without medical care, having to lie on the ground to be seen.” Civil rights advocates said that when one mentally ill man detained at Desert View Annex began drinking shampoo, ICE and GEO Group staff simply moved him to a different dorm instead of getting him the urgent medical attention he needed.

At Adelanto, one visiting Baptist minister described detained immigrants suffering from treatable medical conditions and pieces of food moving on a plate “because there were maggots inside them.” The Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice member said that in his near-decade of visiting detained individuals, “my last year has been the worst.”

Visiting federal lawmakers echoed that dire assessment, calling Adelanto “one of the nation’s most troubled immigration detention facilities.”

“The problems at Adelanto are not new, and they are not isolated,” said Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus Chair Judy Chu (CA-28). “They are the result of years of neglect that have continued despite repeated warnings, congressional oversight, and detainee deaths. Adelanto has had countless opportunities to change and has failed time and again. It is time to shut down this facility once and for all.”

Stateline reports that strikes have also “erupted at the 1,800-bed North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Michigan, and at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, which has a capacity of nearly 1,900. North Lake is the largest facility in the Midwest, and Moshannon Valley is the largest in the Northeast.” Both are GEO Group-operated.

At the Moshannon facility this past April, detained individuals have faced retaliation for striking, including being thrown into solitary confinement. Human rights experts have said that prolonged solitary confinement amounts to “psychological torture.” One man detained at Moshannon also said that staff “launched an inspection to find who is ‘leading’ the hunger strike and ‘speaking out’ about conditions there.” Recall that just days ago in New Jersey, Martin Soto was targeted and transferred after he led strike efforts at Delaney Hall. “Since his arrival, he’s been placed in solitary confinement, or as ICE calls it in “disciplinary segregation” — a punishment for being the suspected leader of a hunger and labor strike,” NJ.com reported.

Hundreds have also protested at the North Lake facility, citing conditions “dangerously short of both constitutional mandates and federal detention standards,” according to a May 14 letter from the ACLU of Michigan and the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center (MIRC).

In one example, records showed that one detained woman, identified only as “Jane Doe 2,” requested a mammogram seven times to no avail after self-detecting a lump in her breast. “An ACLU attorney repeatedly wrote to North Lake about Ms. Doe 2’s health concerns and provided an expert medical opinion that screening is needed,” the ACLU of Michigan and MIRC said, “but those communications went unanswered until the day after Ms. Doe 2 had been transferred to another detention facility and did not indicate that she had received care.”

A private prison operator that saw an 800% increase in profits during the 2025 fiscal year should not be forcing human beings to beg for basic medical attention, but that’s the end result of outsourcing civil immigration enforcement to politically-aligned corporations like GEO Group. During the 2024 campaign, it became the first corporation whose PAC maxed out to then-candidate Donald Trump, watchdog group CREW said. GEO Group also donated half a million dollars to his inauguration, Open Secrets said.

This infusion of cash into the mass deportation candidate’s campaign paid off, when the corporation secured a contract worth an estimated $1 billion to run Delaney. And we’re all paying for it, because that’s money that came directly from U.S. taxpayers thanks to Trump and Stephen Miller. And in further examples of the collusion between private prisons and immigration policy, former GEO Group executive David Venturella has been tapped to head ICE. So-called “border czar” Tom Homan was also a GEO Group consultant.

In their latest letter to the public, immigrants detained at Delaney Hall revealed they “have been subjected to reprisals, discrimination, mockery, mistreatment, and threats” since launching their hunger strike, sharing that GEO Group staff “constantly threaten to deport us, transfer us to punishment units, and move us from one detention center to another; they take photos of us in the dormitories without our consent and tell us that we have no rights here.”

The life-risking actions of these brave immigrants have not been in vain. Because of their strikes, the nation is paying attention and GEO Group is feeling the heat. In New Jersey, state Attorney General Jennifer Davenport filed a lawsuit over Delaney’s refusal to allow full health inspections. Meanwhile, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka announced that he’s suing to close Delaney entirely.

Freedom for Immigrants reminds us that detained individuals go on hunger strikes only as “a last resort.” For hundreds of immigrants, that moment is here. We cannot look away, and as a nation we must confront the abuses being carried out in our names and with billions of our tax dollars.

“Again and again, detained immigrants have risked retaliation to speak out against medical neglect, isolation from their loved ones and legal counsel, the use of solitary confinement, abusive policies, and conditions that endanger human life and dignity,” said Shut Down Adelanto Coalition’s Esmeralda Santos. “Their courage in the face of systemic mistreatment demands not only recognition, but action.”