The hunger strike ICE says never happened

Code Switch

NPR

Society & Culture

4.6 • 14.9K Ratings

🗓️ 30 June 2026

⏱️ 36 minutes

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Summary

Hundreds of people detained at an ICE detention center in Newark, NJ refused to eat and work for a month. They were protesting the conditions inside — spoiled food, lack of medical care, overcrowding. The detainees are the ones who actually keep the facility running — cooking, cleaning, doing laundry — all while getting paid a dollar a day. This week, two reporters who have been covering the strikes, José Olivares and Sophie Hurwitz, talk about what happens when detainees stop eating and working — and what it means that the government insists none of it is happening.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, you're listening to Code Switch, the show about race and identity from NPR.
0:06.5	I'm B.A. Parker.
0:07.8	And I'm Gene Demby.
0:09.5	All right, Gene, I'm sure you've heard about the protests that have been happening at this ICE detention center called Delaney Hall.
0:17.4	Yeah, that's the one in Newark, New Jersey, right?
0:19.6	Yeah, it reopened as a detention center last year, and it's run by Geo Group.
0:25.3	It's this private prison company that runs immigration detention centers throughout the country.
0:31.0	Now, Delaney can hold up to a thousand people inside, and the detainees there are saying that
0:36.4	the living conditions are untenable. The food is
0:39.8	spoiled or they're sleeping on floors due to overcrowding or there's a lack of toilet paper for
0:44.9	them to use. Yeah. And if you see this place, it very much looks like a prison, right? Like
0:49.4	immigration detention is not actually supposed to be criminal punishment. You know, it's supposed to
0:53.7	serve as a holding place for people awaiting immigration hearings
0:57.3	and going through deportation proceedings, supposedly.
1:00.2	Supposedly.
1:01.4	And several hundred detainees at Delaney Hall were protesting the conditions they're being held in
1:06.7	by going on a hunger strike and a labor strike.
1:11.5	It's a labor strike because in addition to being held there,
1:15.0	the detainees are the ones who help maintain the facility.
1:18.8	So they are the ones who do sanitation, who do food services,
1:23.0	who work in the library, all of it.
1:25.5	So the idea is if they stop working then the place kind of can't function.
	...

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