Hyraxical Apocrypha

landscape.193, rocky path

This is Delaney Hall, a 1000-bed for-profit immigration detention facility in industrial Newark operated by Geo Group, one of the two largest incarceration corporations in America, whose CEO recently called expansion of ICE an "unprecedented opportunity" for profit. Last fall ICE hired a GEO group subsidiary, BI Incorporated, as immigration bounty hunters, allowing GEO to vertically integrate their business model. Unsurprisingly, GEO has a record of inmate welfare abuses, and last week, migrants being held at Delaney began a hunger strike for against inhumane conditions, lack of proper medical care, and coercive pressure to sign self-deportation documents. The strikers are seeking release of the elderly, young, and sick, a meeting with Governor Shirrell, and due legal process where they now face interminable incarceration without court access.

This is all in the national news now, but mostly the clashes between protesters and ICE agents on several nights. By day, a mix of aid groups, activists, friends and family of detainees, local DSA organizers, and even clergy have been on site in support of the 300 strikers inside. This was the scene on Friday, before police attempted to corral protesters with riot shields, tear gas, and pepper spray over the last two nights. Today, an overnight curfew has been imposed on the whole street, but visitation rights for family have been restored as of noon. NJ Governor Mikie Shirrell has called for deescalation, but even she was denied access this week to inspect Delaney Hall with state health authorities to ensure detainee welfare.

DELANEY HALL HUNGER STRIKERS DEMAND:

1. A MEETING WITH THE GOVERNOR: Governor Mikie Sherrill must visit Delaney Hall to directly observe detention conditions and hear testimony from detained individuals.

2. RELEASE THE YOUNG & ELDERLY: Immediate release of all young individuals, elderly individuals, and pregnant women.

3. RELEASE MEDICALLY VULNERABLE DETAINEES: The immediate release of those with serious medical conditions.

Snake Hill and process, Secaucus.

landscape.191 & 192

Last Tuesday, Wired detailed ongoing ICE plans to drastically expand into 150 new, secret office locations. Citing "national security concerns", this expansion bypasses the usual bidding process for government leases, which would usually make such locations public. Nonetheless, the report was able to pinpoint fifty locations planned as of January, including three in the Tri-State Area in advance of an oft-threatened major operation here.

This is 5 Becker Farm Road, part of a bland, unassuming office plaza in Roseland, New Jersey, among insurance companies and the headquarters of payroll service ADP. Such spaces are probably not intended to hold ICE arrests, but to offer operational and legal support to the rapidly expanding network of detainment warehouses. Like the one just a little further west, in Roxbury, NJ, where this week residents spoke out at a community meeting after ICE agents opened fire on the car of a local resident.

Among the other new office leases are one at 843 Union Ave in New Windsor, New York, just west of Newburgh, where local officials expressed consternation after they were startled to learn that ICE had been using the space for four months already. Another is at 88 Froehlich Farm Blvd in Woodbury, New York, near a passport office and the Nassau County Correctional Center, where the county has been working with ICE to take in more detainees since last year, one of who died in his cell in September.

Spectacle Radio ep.149 :: 01.29.25 :: To San Francisco and Boston and Ohio and Uganda

As ICE agents conduct extrajudicial killings on the streets, as the administration scurries to lie and fabricate blame for the victims (with the clear message that protest justifies murder), let's look at more plans for ICE infrastructure.

In Chester, New York, a town of 12,000 a little over an hour northwest of NYC, locals are protesting an ICE plan to buy a warehouse in the town's marsh-bound industrial park in order to warehouse 1500 detainees, greatly increasing ICE's operational capacity in the region.

Outcry followed a January 8th notice of intent (required of all Federal agencies building in flood zones), but the plan was originally reported in December in the Washington Post, where the Chester site is just one of 16 smaller warehouse locations chosen to feed into seven new massive industrial warehouses intended to hold up to 10,000 prisoners each. In full, the system is intended to increase ICE's operational capacity by 80,000. According to ICE Acting Director Todd M Lyons, speaking to military profiteers at the 2025 Border Security Expo in Phoenix in April, "We need to get better at treating this like a business ... like Prime, but with human beings.”

Let's look at some ICE sites. This summer the federal ICE budget increased to $75 billion, enabling a massive expansion in both hiring and facilities, and the kinds of abuses taking place in Minneapolis right now. And though they never really left New York, they're ramping up activity here again as well.

This is the Metropolitan Detention Complex in Sunset Park. It's New York City's only federal prison, and under a new agreement with the Bureau of Prisons last June it is now accepting ICE detainees for the first time in years. As of November, it had an average daily ICE population of 111. Despite also housing high-profile prisoners like Nicolas Maduro and Luigi Mangione, it's chronically understaffed and notoriously lost heat and power for 8 days during the 2019 polar vortex. In August, local congress members were denied an oversight visit.