The hunger strikers at Delaney Hall(Newark, NJ) are being held in a private for-profit facility run by GEO group. GEO Group is a publicly traded corporation.
From GEO Group’s first quarter guidance released May 6th, 2026:
George C. Zoley, GEO’s Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and Founder, said, “We are very pleased with our first quarter results and improved full year outlook. Our strong performance has been driven by the new growth opportunities we captured in 2025 and are normalizing in 2026. Last year was the most successful period for new business wins in our Company’s history with new or expanded contracts representing up to $520 million in annualized revenues. We expect 2026 to be very active as well and therefore believe that we have upside potential across our diversified business segments.”
GEO Group’s stock has risen 25% in one month, after their first quarter results. Let me translate this corporate speech:
“New growth opportunities” aka ICE is kidnapping immigrants at a record pace and we need to open new concentration camps to hold all of those people. 70.8% of current detainees have no criminal convictions.
“Last year was the most successful period for new business wins in our Company’s history with new or expanded contracts representing up to $520 million in annualized revenues. We expect 2026 to be very active as well.” The taxpayers are giving us half a billion dollars a year to hold people in inhumane conditions and we expect the kidnappings to continue unabated in 2026!
GEO Group Exec New ICE Chief
On June 1st, Trump tapped David Venturella, a former ICE official and executive at GEO Group, to replace Todd Lyons as head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Surely it has nothing to do with GEO Group’s $1,000,000 donation to Trump’s MAGA Super Pac. Or their $750k donation to the Republican Congressional Leadership Fund. Or their $500k donation to the Republican Senate Leadership Fund.
In 2026 GEO Group gave a $250k donation to Ohio Republican Jim Jordan. Must be a coincidence that Jim Jordan chairs the congressional committee overseeing ICE.
GEO Group contributed $3.7 million to Trump and Republicans in the 2024 election cycle. Their revenue has now increased by $520 million a year under Trump. That’s a 140x return on investment!
You would think with that kind of returns GEO Group could feed their prisoners. In June of 2025 prisoners inside Delaney Hall rioted over lack of food and four of them escaped by punching through a wall.
Several dozen men in Unit 5, on an upper floor of the jailhouse known as Delaney Hall, had grown frustrated. And after returning Thursday afternoon from a first-floor cafeteria, where they said they had been given slices of bread in place of a meal, they began covering security cameras and smashing at walls and windows.
The men who escaped had punched a hole through an exterior wall of the jail that Mr. Kim described as crude — “essentially just drywall with some mesh inside.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/14/nyregion/newark-ice-detainees-escape.html
It’s been a year, GEO Group’s profits have risen 17% yet prisoners inside their camps are still being fed maggot infested food.
GEO Group also forces their prisoners to perform forced labor. In Feb of 2026 the supreme court ruled unanimously against GEO group. The ruling stems from a 2014 lawsuit alleging detainees in Aurora, CO were forced to perform unpaid janitorial and other jobs for $1 a day to supplement meager meals.
GEO group argued that as a government contractor they were immune from lawsuits. The ruling is a defeat for GEO Group but not a final decision.
How You Can Help
Pull Your Money from & Boycott Citizen’s Bank
“Over more than a dozen years, Citizens Bank has arranged for and helped provide some $2 billion in financing for GEO Group and CoreCivic,” says Barrett, a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg Businessweek. “Without that money, these corporations literally could not function.”
“The idea is to basically use our collective economic power to speak out about those who are aiding and abetting” the immigrant detention system in the United States, adds Cohen. “A lot of what’s going on in these ICE detention facilities is not lawful because … immigrant neighbors, most of whom have not committed any crime beyond immigration violations, are being held there without due process.”
https://www.democracynow.org/2026/6/1/citizens_bank_ice
Support Hunger Strikers
https://www.standwithminnesota.com/jersey
Actions to Take
Tell Congress: Defund ICE and Show Up for Immigrants at Delaney Hall!
Give to Delaney Hall Emergency Fundraising: https://givebutter.com/DHEmergencyFunds
Donate to the SOMA Bail Fund: https://givebutter.com/DHFreeThemAll
Read this letter from people inside Delaney Hall
Register for a mass call on June 3rd with Make The Road New Jersey
Volunteer to Take a Shift at Delaney Hall
Thank you for covering this! We don’t want another dollar going to inhumane ICE camps. Not from Congress & not from Citizens Bank.
And June 6 (this coming Saturday), there are 130+ actions planned at bank branches and detention centers to call on Citizens to cut ties with GEO Group and CoreCivic: www.mobilize.us/deicecitizens