A pregnant girl from the Dominican Republic affected by extreme abdomen pains was denied prenatal take care of a month. A Guatemalan man recognized with leukemia grew sicker after lacking two months of remedies. A Haitian girl had a throat tumor that obstructed her respiration; it grew to become so painful she might not communicate.
These are among the grave situations detailed in 60 emergency lawsuits filed by immigrants detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on the Delaney Corridor detention middle who allege they had been denied important medical care.
Some had been arrested whereas recovering from extreme medical situations — together with a stroke, thyroid most cancers and colon elimination surgical procedure — and mentioned the ability was unable to deal with their situations. Others suffered from persistent diseases like diabetes and epilepsy and mentioned the ability didn’t present constant entry to life-saving medicines. Even immigrants who entered Delaney Corridor wholesome after which grew to become unwell had bother accessing care, courtroom paperwork and medical data obtained by The Metropolis Reporter present.
Collectively these accounts, drawn from emergency lawsuits filed between mid-October 2025 and Could 2026, provide essentially the most complete view but of the experiences of detainees trying to get medical care inside a facility that’s grow to be a lightning rod for the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement insurance policies. Lots of the accounts within the fits had been corroborated with medical data and interviews. Operated by the non-public jail operator GEO Group underneath a 15-year, $1 billion contract with the Division of Homeland Safety (DHS), Delaney Corridor in Newark, New Jersey, is the biggest detention middle within the New York space.
Detainees on the 1,000-person facility have been organizing since February in a marketing campaign to enhance situations. Final month, almost 300 folks held inside signed a letter describing poor entry to medical care and inedible meals. They launched a starvation and work strike days later. One in every of their calls for was the instant launch of medically weak people. As the strike wore on, protestors exterior scuffled with heavily-armed federal brokers and later state and native police.
“The medical care is unhealthy,” mentioned Eric Mark, a lawyer who has represented purchasers detained on the facility and hopes to see an enchancment in situations somewhat than heed latest calls to close it down. “Signs of sickness are ignored. Requests for medical consideration are ignored. When consideration is offered, analysis and remedy are sometimes cursory and insufficient.”
The Division of Homeland Safety has repeatedly denied any points with medical care at Delaney Corridor.
“It’s a longstanding observe to offer complete medical care from the second an alien enters ICE custody. This consists of medical, dental and psychological well being consumption screening inside 12 hours of arriving at every detention facility, a full well being evaluation inside 14 days of getting into ICE custody or arrival at a facility, and entry to medical appointments and 24-hour emergency care,” in accordance with a press release by ICE offered to The Metropolis Reporter, reiterating the company’s detention requirements. “That is the most effective healthcare many aliens have acquired of their total lives.”
GEO Group didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark.
ICE detainees are entitled to sufficient medical care in accordance with due course of protections within the structure. However many attorneys have alleged these requirements aren’t being met. Medical and courtroom data reviewed by The Metropolis Reporter present that individuals skilled delays in seeing medical professionals and had bother accessing important medicines, in addition to important specialists. Manageable illnesses might grow to be life-threatening in detention as their family members feared for his or her nicely being.
Antonio, from Venezuela, had just lately undergone gastric bypass surgical procedure when he was arrested in February by ICE in Newark whereas on a supply job. Whereas restoration required sustaining a particular eating regimen, the meals at Delaney Corridor led to weeks of extreme abdomen pains and blood in his urine and stool, he advised The Metropolis Reporter in Spanish. (Like others we spoke to for this story, Antonio’s full title is being withheld as he fears retaliation in his immigration continuing.)
As his well being worsened, Antonio mentioned, employees started to press him to signal voluntary departure paperwork. “For my well being I ought to signal, they began to inform me,” he mentioned.
He recalled sobbing to his spouse over the cellphone: “These folks need me to die in right here.”
‘Liberty Can Be Restored Later. Mind Cells Can’t.’
By the point Marcelo, was detained by ICE whereas driving, the 46-year-old Newark resident had already had two coronary heart assaults.. With each day medicines and a strict eating regimen, the Ecuadorian development employee was in a position to handle his diabetes and hypertension.
Shortly after his arrest, his spouse, Bertha, known as the ability to report his situation to employees, she advised The Metropolis Reporter in Spanish.
“He’s somebody who actually wants to observe his oxygen ranges. If he runs out of oxygen, he collapses fully,” she advised employees. “We don’t need him to grow to be simply one other statistic — one other dying.”
Inside days his well being deteriorated, and he started complaining of extreme chest ache that radiated up his left arm. The ache continued till the following morning when he vomited, and the ability known as an ambulance, in accordance with medical data.
Physicians monitored Marcelo for a attainable coronary heart situation or pneumonia. He was not getting quite a lot of oxygen to his lungs, hospital assessments confirmed. After two days, he stabilized and was despatched again to Delaney Corridor.
Six weeks later, Marcelo complained of chest ache once more and reported to the infirmary, the place he fainted. The ability waited 11 hours from his preliminary signs to name an ambulance, in accordance with hospital data. When he arrived, the blood stress and diabetes medicines that he had been beforehand taking weren’t listed. As an alternative, he was taking ibuprofen, aspirin and gabapentin, which can be utilized to deal with nerve ache or to induce sleep.
Marc Stern, a doctor and professor on the College of Washington who reviewed Marcelo’s medical data on the request of The Metropolis Reporter, mentioned that based mostly on his historical past “he ought to have been despatched to the emergency room instantly.”
He added it was unlikely Marcelo not wanted these medicines. “It’s extra seemingly than not that the medicines had been stopped inappropriately,” he mentioned.
As immigration arrests surged final spring, ICE’s widening dragnet took in rising numbers of medically weak folks, together with pregnant ladies and other people with severe situations, like Marcelo. The Division of Homeland Safety has broad authority to launch these with medical wants from detention, however within the 60 circumstances reviewed by The Metropolis Reporter, detainees had been pressured to file a federal lawsuit to hunt launch from detention.
Folks with severe medical situations detained at Delaney Corridor during the last a number of months embrace a person recovering from a stroke, a person with just one functioning lung who developed flu-like signs and a person who had each a kidney transplant and open coronary heart surgical procedure and who required 23 prescription tablets a day. All reported that they weren’t receiving needed medicines, in accordance with courtroom filings.
“If they’ve complicated sufferers, they want to have the ability to appropriately handle them,” mentioned Susan Lawrence, a doctor and former medical director of an ICE facility in Atlanta, Georgia. “In the event that they’re not in a position to appropriately handle them, due to staffing or due to treatment points, then they should switch them to a facility that may take care of them appropriately.”
In some particular person circumstances that The Metropolis Reporter inquired about, ICE mentioned it offered care. Within the case of the pregnant girl from the Dominican Republic, an ICE spokesperson mentioned she had gotten remedy for “for belly ache, first trimester being pregnant, hypertension, constipation and cardiac arrhythmia.” Of the Haitian girl affected by the tumor in her throat, ICE responded that she “acquired remedy for a non-cystic mass on her throat and neck, acute throat ache, neck ache and issue swallowing throughout her time in ICE custody.”
However because the protrusion made respiration harder, employees at Delaney Corridor refused the Haitian detainee additional pillows, in accordance with her go well with. As an alternative, she used additional sheets from detainees who had been deported or transferred. A choose ordered her launch, saying her state of affairs met “excessive circumstances of particular urgency,” as her situation deteriorated till she might not communicate.
A Colombian man affected by epilepsy went greater than per week with out entry to each day treatment after his arrest in February, in accordance with his lawsuit. “Civil detention just isn’t meant to be a dying sentence by neglect,” mentioned his legal professional Alexandra Minogue within the go well with. Every single day there, she mentioned, introduced an elevated threat that her shopper would endure a doubtlessly deadly seizure.
“Liberty could be restored later,” she wrote. “Mind cells can’t.” A DHS spokesperson mentioned he “acquired remedy for his historical past of seizure dysfunction.”
A federal Choose Jamel Semper agreed along with his legal professional, ordering the person’s instant launch, discovering the denial of his treatment seemingly violated his constitutional proper to due course of.
The company confirmed the arrest of the Guatemalan man with leukemia however didn’t dispute he had no entry to his remedies throughout the two months he was at Delaney Corridor.
‘Ache Like I’ve By no means Had in My Life’
Haruna advised ICE brokers he was wholesome when he was detained at Delaney Corridor after he was arrested final July. However after 5 months there, the 39-year-old asylum seeker from Ghana began to note blood in his stool and felt dizzy and weak.
Getting medical care at Delaney Corridor required filling out a request kind after which ready for a nurse to go to your unit. However generally his requests had been ignored, Haruna mentioned. Solely after a number of requests and repeated calls from his spouse was he in a position to see a physician, in accordance with courtroom data and an interview. By then, his signs had been so extreme that he was transferred to a neighborhood emergency room the place he remained chained at his wrists and ankles whereas receiving a blood transfusion.
After just a few days, Haruna was returned to Delaney Corridor, however his signs continued. He missed a surgical appointment, courtroom data present. In March, his situation deteriorated so considerably that he was taken to the emergency room thrice for extra blood infusions and surgical procedure. Medical doctors famous that he was “at excessive threat for morbidity and mortality,” data present.
In a latest cellphone name from Delaney Corridor, Haruna mentioned that regardless of receiving remedy, he’s nonetheless bleeding and has ache.
“I’m sick. I inform them the identical issues, however they don’t take it to be one thing severe,” he advised The Metropolis Reporter. After almost a yr in Delaney Corridor, he mentioned, “It’s like hell to me now.”
Anjali Niyogi, an inside drugs physician at Tulane College who reviewed Haruna’s medical data, wrote in a letter to the courtroom that his gastrointestinal bleeding “has not been correctly managed whereas in detention.”
“Continued detention locations him at extreme threat of gastrointestinal bleeding and extreme medical decline,” Niyogi mentioned.
Haruna was amongst a number of individuals who alleged they skilled gastrointestinal bleeding that went ignored by medical employees. One other included B. who was born in Guinea and was detained in April after a routine ICE check-in. In courtroom data and an interview, he mentioned that he had blood in his stool for 39 days — your complete time of his detention. He solely discovered aid after a choose ordered his launch, and he was in a position to search care on his personal.
“It was like ache that I by no means had in my life,” he advised The Metropolis Reporter.
The symptom can point out a variety of medical points, from hemorrhoids to most cancers, and requires an analysis by a medical skilled in a well timed method, mentioned Homer Venters, a doctor and former chief medical officer at New York’s Rikers Island jail complicated.
“Bleeding — both coughing up blood, vomiting blood, having blood in your stool— these are doubtlessly very severe indicators and signs,” he advised The Metropolis Reporter. “These kinds of sufferers want speedy evaluation.”
Legal professionals representing folks detained at Delaney Corridor mentioned it was widespread for his or her purchasers to obtain medicines like Tylenol, even for extreme points.
“We regularly see folks with complicated medical histories and medical points being handled with over-the-counter ache treatment that doesn’t do the job,” mentioned Alex Mintz, a lawyer who represents a number of detainees at Delaney Corridor.
This doesn’t meet the requirements of required care, mentioned Lawrence, the previous medical director of the Georgia ICE detention middle.
“It’s the duty of the ability that’s holding them to offer constitutionally sufficient medical care, so if all they want is Tylenol, then nice, but when they want insulin, in the event that they want HIV medicines, in the event that they want different specialised care, it’s the duty of the ability to offer that,” she mentioned.
Ready for ICE to Approve
For detainees in search of specialised medical remedy, the wait usually stretched out for months, in accordance with courtroom data. Some have but to see a specialist.
E., a homosexual asylum seeker from Ghana, misplaced many of the sight in a single eye after native authorities assaulted him due to his sexuality , in accordance with medical data and courtroom paperwork.
By the point he was arrested at an asylum interview in October, the sight in his different eye was deteriorating as nicely, inflicting him sharp pains. Trapped inside Delaney Corridor, he feared he would go completely blind. Every time he visited the infirmary, medical employees advised him the identical factor: “They’re ready for ICE to approve,” he advised The Metropolis Reporter.
By a good friend in detention, he discovered of the Mami Chelo Basis, a bunch that helps detainees at Delaney Corridor with severe medical points. He despatched an pressing message to the group’s director Sally Pillay in February in search of assist.
“Afraid to go whole blindness,” he wrote. “I’m begging you within the title of God.”
The group was in a position to join him with a professional bono lawyer and shortly after, 5 months after his arrest, a federal choose ordered his launch. E. has since been in a position to get cataract surgical procedure, and his imaginative and prescient has improved dramatically, he mentioned.
Nonetheless, different medically frail folks stay locked up at Delaney Corridor. Haruna, who has been held there for almost a yr, nonetheless has a pending lawsuit in search of launch from detention, as does Marcelo who’s reaching his sixth month on the facility.
After submitting a habeas petition requesting his launch, the choose dominated towards Marcelo, however added that his lawyer might file a letter to contest the choice.
The lawyer, Marlon Bayas, wrote to the choose in early April, however up to now there has solely been silence. “There’s a blatant disregard for anybody with medical situations,” Bayas advised The Metropolis Reporter. “I don’t know why the choose is simply sitting on this case.”
As Marcelo’s spouse Bertha, who’s a authorized everlasting U.S. resident, watched him rising weaker with each go to, she felt powerless, she advised The Metropolis Reporter in Spanish.
“He’s not the identical particular person he was earlier than. His face, his expression — it’s all gone,” she mentioned, as her husband, who has by no means been accused or convicted of a criminal offense on this nation, now approaches six months locked up.
The couple have three youngsters collectively, ages 17 and 12 and an toddler. Her two older youngsters have been rattled by their father’s sudden decline.
“Mother, ‘Take a look at him. Take a look at how Dad seems to be. Take a look at how he’s modified,’” Bertha mentioned one advised her on a latest go to.
“‘Hush,” she urges them. “‘Don’t say issues like that in entrance of him. Simply hug him. Inform him you like him.’”
