As the midterm elections approach, the Church must embrace more explicitly political strategies to combat Trump's war on immigrants.
At Delaney Hall in New Jersey, a hunger strike by some three hundred detainees has entered its third week, while protests rage outside the facility. Detainees’ families describe substandard medical care, inedible food, and neglectful and sometimes abusive guards. The strike and work stoppage has also brought attention to the issue of forced labor by detainees, whose “jobs” cooking, cleaning, and doing other maintenance pay as little as $1 a day, saving the for-profit prison company GEO Group that operates the facility millions in overhead costs. The multibillion-dollar company has deep ties to the Trump administration, and its profits have nearly doubled in the first quarter of 2026, thanks primarily to federal contracts. Yet oversight of the facility has been difficult. Democratic New Jersey congresswoman LaMonica McIver is facing criminal charges for trying to conduct an oversight visit to the center last year. She urges officials to “follow the money” at Delaney, which receives $60 million per year from taxpayers.
