Bennie Thompson

Rep. Bennie Thompson brought together Democratic members of the House Committee on Homeland Security in Newark on June 17.

NEWARK ― Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, ranking member of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security, gathered with fellow Democrats from the panel at City Hall on Wednesday, June 17, to discuss what they said is an administration's unbridled immigration policy that devours billions and enforces its will, with no clear goal.

They described a policy that has logjammed immigration courts and packed private prisons with people serving indefinite terms without felony convictions.

"A policy where cruelty is the point," said Rep. LaMonica McIver, who was joined on the dais by Reps. Nellie Pou and Analilia Mejia. All three are New Jersey Democrats who serve on the Homeland Security Committee.

Thompson empaneled the "shadow hearing," as it was called by McIver, to seek guidance on shuttering Delaney Hall from a stable of witnesses.

Story continues after gallery.

The Democrats' role in overseeing a federal department flush with $359.1 billion in appropriations ― $240.7 billion of which has been provided by reconciliation bills outside the annual budget process ― is hobbled by their being in the minority party, which lacks authority to compel testimony with subpoenas, Thompson said.

"We look forward to the day that can be done," he said. In the meantime, Democrats remain alone in their resolve to tackle the immigration enforcement issue. "They are not bystanders," Thompson said of Republicans in Congress, "they are enablers."

'Warehouse of human despair'

Testifying before the panel was Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who has launched multiple lawsuits against the GEO Group, the private prison company operating Delaney Hall under a $1 billion, 15-year contract with the Homeland Security Department, over its failure to prove it has the municipal permits required to operate within the city's borders.

Members also heard from Amol Sinha, executive director of the ACLU of New Jersey; Viri Martinez of the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice; and Adam Marshall, a military veteran who was arrested outside Delaney Hall by federal agents while serving as a field medic to injured protesters.

Each testified about experiences with the government agency and the private prison company overseeing the facility, and their alleged violations against the human souls in their custody.

As a government contractor, Baraka said, GEO Group skirts liability for allegations of abuse and neglect that would have shuttered any business operating in another private industry. The deal GEO inked with Homeland Security is not just a billion-dollar lease, he said, but a "shield."

The practices described by Baraka and other witnesses include claims from detainees of physical abuse at the hands of guards and federal field agents, spoiled food, solitary confinement without cause, inept medical care and denial of access to legal counsel, as previously reported by The Record and NorthJersey.com.

"If this was a nursing home that did not follow the rules of local or state government," Baraka said, "we would have already moved to shut it down ― period."

To date, the ACLU has filed 250 pending legal actions against the White House for its violative enforcement and custodial tactics, Sinha told the congressional panel. Nevertheless, the administration continues its operations unimpeded, despite polls showing a growing number of citizens who broadly disagree with Trump's methods.

The family of Geraldine Delaney, for whom the building was named, recently issued a sharp rebuke of the detention center and those who oversee it, Sinha told the Democratic panel.

Delaney's niece, Marianne, told MS NOW that the former halfway house for low-level offenders "was intended to be a 250-bed facility to do good [and] save people's lives, not to be a warehouse for human despair."