Private prison company eyes Newark site for new ICE jail

A private prison company wants a federal judge to declare again that New Jersey’s law barring immigrant detention centers is unconstitutional so it can open a new immigration detention jail in Newark, court records show.

The GEO Group, one of the largest private prison companies in the nation, wants to contract with U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement to house up to 600 immigrant detainees at a detention center it owns in Newark, next to Essex County’s jail.

But the state law — deemed partially unconstitutional by a federal judge in 2023 — may prevent ICE from entering into the contract, the company’s lawyers say in a new federal lawsuit targeting Gov. Phil Murphy and Attorney General Matt Platkin.

The law “unlawfully discriminates against GEO in its capacity as a contractor for the federal government because it targets privately contracted immigration detention services, an area under federal control, while New Jersey law allows other forms of privately contracted detention services for non-federal purposes,” says the complaint, filed April 15.

The Newark detention center, Delaney Hall, was used to house immigrant detainees between 2011 and 2017, the complaint says. Essex County incarcerated some of its jail population until last year.

Gov. Phil Murphy signed the law barring immigrant jails in August 2021, after immigrant advocates spent years protesting contracts that allowed ICE to house immigrant detainees in public jails in Bergen, Essex, and Hudson counties. Essex announced it would no longer house detainees days before Murphy signed the bill into law, with Bergen and Hudson following soon after.

CoreCivic, a private firm that contracts with ICE to house immigrant detainees in its Elizabeth jail, sued New Jersey last year over the law, calling it unconstitutional. In August, a federal judge sided with CoreCivic and said the company could continue housing detainees in its facility (the state has appealed).

Amy Torres, executive director of the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, has long advocated for the closure of immigrant detention centers. She noted that GEO Group claims its potential contract with ICE would be worth more than $100 million.

“That’s so much larger than we’ve ever seen in New Jersey,” Torres said. “It’s so worrying to see this private prison corporation say there’s demand for a contract of upwards of $100 million. It’s absolutely wild.”

In 2018, Essex County charged ICE about $35 million to house detainees at its jail, Bergen received nearly $17 million, and Hudson, $27 million.

Geoffrey Brounell and Scott Schipma, attorneys representing GEO Group, did not respond to a request for comment.

The attorneys in their April 15 complaint make the same arguments CoreCivic made in its lawsuit: that the New Jersey law violates the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause, which says state laws cannot override federal statutes.

“It frustrates Congress’s delegation of discretion to ICE to discharge its constitutional and statutory responsibilities, and impermissibly regulates the federal government’s contracting decisions by effectively displacing the federal government’s determination of what immigration detention facilities are ‘appropriate,’” the complaint states.

The same judge who heard the CoreCivic case — U.S. District Judge Robert Kirsch — is set to hear GEO Group’s complaint. GEO Group notes that Kirsch, during a hearing in the earlier case, said it would be “catastrophic” if states began implementing laws that shut down immigration detention centers.

Torres recognizes why North Jersey remains a prime location for ICE to house detainees — it is close to Manhattan immigration courts and Newark airport — so she wasn’t surprised to see another legal challenge mount. But she stressed her “bitter disappointment.”

“It’s an industry New Jersey lawmakers and New Jerseyans themselves oppose and we don’t want any part in. It’s shocking to see this happen so quickly after the CoreCivic challenge and at the scale they’re suggesting,” she said.

The Attorney General’s Office declined to comment on the lawsuit. A spokeswoman for the Murphy administration did not respond to a request for comment.