The death of Jean Wilson Brutus inside of Delaney Hall, less than 24-hours after being sent to the notorious ICE detention center in Newark, should shock the conscience of everyone. During the single day that Brutus, a previously healthy 41-year old man from Haiti, spent at Delaney Hall, he experienced a medical emergency and died from what ICE claims to be “natural causes.”
It is possible that we may never know what actually killed Brutus due to the extreme secrecy in which GEO Group, the notorious private prison company, operates Delaney Hall, but for those of us who have been organizing visitor support services and mutual aid outside of the center, it sadly does not come as a shock that we would eventually learn of the first death inside.
I have stood outside of Delaney Hall about a dozen times since its reopening in May of 2025, helping with the various tables of food, clothing, and toy drives that a group of talented organizers have set up to support those seeing their loved ones inside.
Since Delaney Hall has no indoor waiting room, visitors wait outside the building in all types of weather, including thunderstorms and snowstorms. We have heard from many of these visitors waiting in often absurdly long lines about the atrocious conditions their family members are experiencing on the inside, including undrinkable water, inedible food, extreme medical neglect, poor sanitation, abusive guards, and smells from the nearby industrial plants in Newark’s chemical corridor that would make anyone nauseous.
It is no surprise that the trauma of incarceration, compounded with the horrific treatment of detainees, would trigger illnesses and even death inside the hellhole that is Delaney Hall.
It is also not hard for Brutus’s death to evoke some of the worst moments in human history. The two main methods of murder in German concentration camps were poison gas and mass shootings, but as the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum explains, hundreds of thousands of people in the camps also died because of the Nazi’s deliberate denial of “adequate food, shelter, medical care, and other necessities.”
In 2025, we see the continued withholding of food and medical care as one of the primary ways in which Israel is continuing to wage its genocide in Gaza. Some of the earliest targets in Israel’s destruction of Gaza were hospitals and food distribution sites, which greatly compounded the number of Palestinian deaths by disease and starvation.
By denying people proper food and medical care, GEO Group is engaging in the same tactics as some of the worst human rights abusers in the world. One can imagine a situation where the conditions inside Delaney Hall degrade even further and the shocking death of Brutus becomes another statistic in a long line of deaths.
That is why organizers like the North New Jersey Democratic Socialists of America are responding with such urgency to the ongoing situation. We know that the tragic death of Jean Wilson Brutus will not be the last one unless we close Delaney Hall and end Trump and Stephen Miller’s deportation machine for good. ICE detention centers are ticking time bombs of death and despair, and we must fight back.
It’s hard to fathom what the people inside Delaney Hall are experiencing right now and it’s easy to put the pain of others outside of your mind when you are surrounded by your own loved ones and material comforts. Delaney Hall is located on a toxic industrial site far outside of any neighborhood a pedestrian would ever walk through. I can see how easy it is for many people, myself included, to look the other way. But the family of Jean Wilson Brutus, alongside many other brave family members who have seen their loved ones kidnapped and brutalized, are not allowing the public to forget the pain ICE has brought to their families.
Just one week before Christmas, I gave a woman named Marissa* who had been visiting her husband at Delaney Hall, a ride back to Newark Penn Station. I often sit in silence when I give people rides back from Delaney Hall, but Marissa was very talkative. It was clear she was lonely and wanted to share her story with me. Just days before she and her husband were set to visit their family in Brazil, he had a check-in at their local ICE office in NYC, where he was told he needed to get fingerprinted. What they thought would be a quick appointment turned into a nightmare when ICE detained him instead.
I was struck by how this man seemed to have done everything exactly the right way. According to Marissa, they had never missed a single one of his immigration appointments, as they had been trying to get him legal status for over a decade. He worked full-time and had no criminal record.
When he got to Delaney, he couldn’t stomach the food, and it took him several days for the guards to give him his medications. Unsurprisingly, his wife said he was sick. Almost everyone inside always seems to be sick. As I dropped her at the train station, I could feel the unbearable loneliness that losing your partner of many years can bring to a person.
Stephanie*, a woman who had been visiting her fiancé in detention for more than two months, stated, “I’m burnt out mentally, physically, emotionally, . . . financially. . . but we have to keep going.”
Many of the people who lose family members in Delaney Hall are under extreme financial distress. It is nearly impossible to support a family on a single income in the NYC metropolitan area, and oftentimes, the person being detained is the primary breadwinner.
Explaining her financial distress, Stephanie said, “I don’t feel like there is any Christmas spirit in my house. I don’t have a tree up. I don’t have any lights up. I haven’t bought gifts. I have not done anything because Christmas doesn’t exist for me right now. The spirit has been taken from me.”
Despite the bleak situation, there is still lots of hope to be found. Visiting hours at Delaney are every Tuesday and Thursday from 4pm – 9pm and Saturdays and Sundays from 7:30am – 7pm. During these hours, dozens of local organizers provide visitor support services at tables offering food, warm clothing, and toys for children. Even something as simple as a cup of hot chocolate and a pair of handwarmers helps make the excruciating wait outside of Delaney Hall tolerable for the families going inside to see their loved ones.
North Jersey DSA has been taking a weekly shift from 7pm – 9pm on Thursdays. If you want to get involved, come join us on our shift or show up any other time during visiting hours. Even in the worst places, community care is still being practiced and the presence of supporters shows people experiencing some of the worst moments of their lives that they are not alone. Solidarity is powerful.
To learn more about the other immigrant justice work the New Jersey Democratic Socialists of America are engaged in such as know your rights trainings, rapid response and ICE watch networks, and campaigns to target local collaborators who profit off of ICE detention centers like Driscoll Foods, you can visit the website of our immigrant justice working group here: https://north.dsanj.org/new-jersey-dsa-immigrant-justice-wg/
You can also email the immigrant justice working group at immigration@dsanj.org.
*All names in this article were changed to protect the identities of the people speaking