Divest Now! Say NO! to ICE Impunity, For-Profit Human Trafficking, and Enslavement by Prison Profiteers Hiding in Your Pension Plan, Mutual Fund, or Retirement Portfolio
About 20 minutes as the crow flies from the Statue of Liberty and her promise of welcome sits Delaney Hall, a 1,000-bed prison for people who’ve committed no crime. A prison for those whom the Trump regime wishes to exclude and expel.
You’ve likely seen the recent news about Delaney Hall. But the horrors being exposed (and downplayed by mainstream media) are not new.
Last November, I joined nonviolent resistance members from Pax Christi [https://paxchristiusa.org/tag/pax-christi-new-jersey/], Cosecha [https://www.lahuelga.com/], New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice [http://New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice], Eyes on ICE New Jersey, and other area organizations. They have been providing radical care and mutual aid for the family members of those unlawfully imprisoned there since it reopened in May 2025. I say “unlawfully detained” because in 2021, New Jersey passed legislation prohibiting local jails and private facilities from incarcerating our immigrant neighbors.
But for Trump’s Department of Homeland “Security” goons, the facility’s location was too good to be true. A nation cannot eject millions of its inhabitants if it cannot hunt, kidnap, corral, and incarcerate them first. Situated steps from the Newark Liberty International Airport, yet hidden from public view in one of the most industrialized corners of New Jersey, Delaney Hall would enable their mass deportation fever dream perfectly.
So, despite the New Jersey state prohibition — and human rights — ICE gifted to private prison profiteer GEO Group a cool one billion of our taxpayer dollars to operate the Newark immigrant concentration camp for fifteen years, until 2040.
Delaney Hall serves the 225+ facility — and counting — ICE immigrant gulag, 90% of which is now operated for profit.
The night I bore witness to the banality of evil that is the daily diet at Delaney Hall, it was so cold I lost all feeling in my toes. But even in the chill and damp, the place reeked. There are multiple reasons for this: At the southern end of Delaney Hall’s Doremus Avenue address is one of the largest sewage treatment plants in the state, possibly in the northeast. Across the street from the Hall’s concertina-laden gates is a waste transfer station served by a dedicated railway line, known colloquially as “the garbage train.” When the garbage train gets stuck, which happens often, it blocks the constant traffic of 18-wheelers and other commercial trucks, adding heavy fumes of gas exhaust to the stench of rotting refuse. There’s also a natural-gas plant in the vicinity, as well as a plastics incinerator, which produces an odor so powerful that, once settled inside your mouth and nose, it will not be washed away.
Lucky me, the one thing I didn’t perceive that winter evening as I stood vigil outside Delaney Hall was the noxious perfume of the animal-fat rendering plant, which in warmer weather, I’m told, makes the whole place smell like death.
Delaney Hall’s surroundings symbolize the lengths to which US Department of Homeland “Security” agencies and contractors will go to dehumanize newcomers and safety seekers, as well as the humanitarians determined to support them per Lady Liberty’s wishes. Even in blue states like New Jersey. Even in blue cities like Newark.
Indeed, the horror show that is Delaney Hall did not begin with Trump & Co. GEO Group operated the facility as an immigrant detention and transfer depot under Obama, from 2011 to 2017, when it was finally shuttered due to sub-standard, inhumane, and condemnable conditions.
On May 22, 2026, roughly 300 of our neighbors unlawfully locked up inside Delaney Hall launched a hunger and labor strike.
In three consecutive letters smuggled out of the lockup and leaked to the public, the strikers cited the same abysmal conditions that closed the place in 2017:
* Inedible food that is either too frozen or too maggot-infested to eat;
* Physical, emotional, and psychological abuse on the part of ICE deportation officers and GEO Group guards;
* Undrinkable water;
* Denial of medical care;
* Denial of access to attorneys and case workers;
* Denial of due process;
* Limited access to families; and
* A fundamental lack of humanity, including forced labor — cleaning, food prep, mopping up blood, etc. — for only $1 a day in pay.
Despite GEO Group’s $60 million per year windfall, there is only one doctor at Delaney Hall to support the needs of 800+ inmates, including pregnant women and folks with chronic, but treatable, health issues, like diabetes. When such common ailments as the flu rip through the facility, they have been known to turn life-threatening.
But there is plenty of concertina wire as well as loads of surveillance cameras and GEO Group guards, like this guy, whom resisters have nicknamed “Mr. Sunshine.”
By denying its captives medical attention, by forcing them to work in place of paid staff, and by providing them only rotten, moldy, worm-infested food, GEO Group routinely puts its profits over people in violation of their legal and human rights.
It’s the business model. And it’s a crime against humanity.
Delaney Hall is not unique.
Also in May 2026, our immigrant neighbors imprisoned at the 750-bed Desert View Annex [https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-05-21/immigrants-hunger-strike-inhumane-conditions-southern-california-detention-facility] in Adelanto, California, launched a hunger strike to call attention to similar substandard conditions, including a lack of medical attention, unsafe drinking water, and mold.
In April, hunger strikes erupted at the 1,800-bed North Lake Processing Center [https://michiganadvance.com/2026/04/22/protestors-gather-outside-baldwin-facility-as-immigrant-detainees-held-by-ice-launch-hunger-strike/] in Baldwin, Michigan, as well as at the 1,900-bed Moshannon Valley Processing Center [https://www.pennlive.com/news/2026/04/after-ice-detainees-in-pa-went-on-a-hunger-strike-officials-put-them-in-solitary-confinement.html] in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, the largest ICE immigrant gulag lockups in the US Midwest and the US Northeast, respectively.
Q: What do Delaney Hall, Desert View Annex, North Lake, and Moshannon Valley immigration concentration camps have in common, besides the egregious conditions?
A: They are all operated by the GEO Group under ICE contracts paid for by us.
GEO Group is the largest — but not the only — ICE prison profiteer making bank off human enslavement. There is also CoreCivic, which counts among its prisoners infants, children, and youth incarcerated at the infamous family lockup in Dilley, Texas, also reopened by Trump & Co after being condemned and shuttered, we thought, for good.
CoreCivic reported $2.2 billion in annual revenue in 2025. GEO Group’s profits topped that at $2.63 billion. Both companies anticipate doubling their annual earnings in 2026 as they take on new contracts and open more facilities for ICE.
Let’s Make Crimes Against Humanity a Bad Investment.
Another thing the two companies have in common is that they are publicly traded. They have long been considered “no-brainer investments” by mutual fund managers, like Vanguard, BlackRock, and Fidelity. As a result, they are likely hiding in your pension plan or retirement portfolio.
But the private prison industry is a bad bet, notes former Fortune 500 company software engineering manager John Fricker. If beds are filled, leadership and shareholders make a lot of money. If the beds aren’t filled, the model fails.
“The single revenue strategy is also dependent on the political winds…Plus, both companies are commiting crimes against humanity.”
The companies and the fund managers that trade their serial dehumanization and acts of ethnic-cleansing, what’s more, are passing their amorality on to us, states attorney and Executive Director of Abolish Private Prisons John Dacey:
“When judges, prosecutors, and public defenders are invested in private prison companies through their pension and retirement fund managers, how does that square with the integrity of the legal system and judicial and legal ethics?”
Dacey and Fricker joined faith leader and immigration justice advocate Jennifer Nelson, as well as Amnesty International Chapter Coordinator and career educator Diana Zuckerman, on May 24, 2026, for a webinar on Learning How to Divest From the ICE Immigrant Gulag sponsored by the Hope Knows No Borders Network [https://sarahtowle.com/hknb-registration].
“They are making us all complicit,” states Diana.
By “us,” she’s including the educators of the children who are now traumatized because their parents have been taken away.
“But we can all take control over our own investments,” adds Jennifer.
She explains to us what motivated her to do so and how she did it.
Learn How to Divest from the Prison ProfiteersHiding in Your Financial Portfolio
Click PLAY Above☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼
There were no “clashes.” ICE attacked.
Our webinar concluded just hours before Delaney Hall strikers, family members, and advocates made national news. On Doremus Avenue that evening, peaceful protestors and vulnerable hunger strikers alike were attacked by goons from ICE, HSI, and other DHS agencies.
Fox News and other legacy media can characterize what happened as “clashes” all they want. But the only violence was federal “law enforcement” violence. Against protesters wearing N95 masks and brandishing signs, ICE showed up with tear gas, flash bangs, pepper spray, tasers, guns, an armored vehicle, and horses.
As the last week of May stretched into June, the violence only escalated when Newark police officers and New Jersey State Troopers joined the fray on the side of the feds. Even US Senator Andy Kim (D-NJ) was pepper-sprayed.
Humanitarians were criminalized and arrested. Hunger and labor strikers were beaten, shackled, and transferred away from their families, advocates, and friends.
We can stop this.
We can refuse to be complicit in theirCrimes Against Humanity.
We can divest our financial holdings from the private prison profiteers working on behalf of ICE.
Click PLAY Above.☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼
Divestment Works
We need only recall the global efforts to bring down South Africa’s Apartheid regime.
We need only look at what happened when Disney bent the knee to Trump, as he tried to tank Jimmy Kimmel’s career. We unsubscribed from Disney’s streaming services en masse, and in 24 hours, the company lost billions. In 48 hours, Jimmy was back on the air.
We can do the same to GEO Group and CoreCivic. We can aim where it hurts them most: at the corporate purse.
Call to Action
For the sake of the strikers, to honor their bravery and self-sacrifice, we must not just demand that GEO Group do better.
We must demand that all immigrant inmates be set free today.
Then, we must abolish the heinous and highly undemocratic concentration camp and transportation network that has been weaponized to unleash a genocide against the stateless — a system that grew up all around us, hiding in plain sight, which purports to be keeping us “secure,” but which is now a full-on domestic terror apparatus making money by trafficking traumatized human beings.
DIVEST from the private prison profiteers who control 90% of ICE’s detention to deportation machine dedicated to making money by trafficking human beings;
SUPPORT AND VOTE only for elected officials campaigning for abolition. Then hold their feet to the fire.
JOIN the peaceful protests at an ICE lockup near you. Because there is an ICE lockup near you.
DOCUMENT AND SHARE the abuses to which you bear witness. Such evidence will be essential when the future tribunals begin.
KEEP the human and legal rights of the strikers — and of you — top of mind.
SAY NO! to ICE impunity, human trafficking, and modern for-profit enslavement of our immigrant neighbors, family members, and friends.
LISTEN to our divestment webinar without delay ☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼. Share it with your colleagues, family members, and friends.
JOIN OUR EFFORTS to grow this into a nationwide divestment campaign. Become part of the Hope Knows No Borders and Abolish Private Prisons Networks today.
In the meantime, stay strong, everyone. Find your allies and keep them close. The only way through this is . . . together.
✊🏼 Sarah
Tales of Humanity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support the work you find here, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.
Divestment Resources
Abolish Private Prisons [https://www.abolishprivateprisons.org/]: The Issue, The Movement, Our Take
American Bar Association [https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/news/2024/am-res/518.pdf], Criminal Justice Section Report to the House of Delegates Resolution
As We Sow [https://www.asyousow.org/], Empowering Shareholders to Change Corporations for Good
Boycott Citizens Bank [https://www.boycottcitizens.org/the-geo-group-corecivic], the only major bank still funding CoreCivic and GEO Group
De-ICE Citizens Bank [https://www.de-icecitizensbank.org/], Citizens is banking on our neighbors’ suffering by fundingICE detention companies
Drop Vanguard [https://www.dropvanguard.org/], Helping values-based institutions ensure that working for justice doesn’t fund injustice
Fossil Free Funds [https://fossilfreefunds.org/], Rid your retirement savings of fossil fuel investments
Invest Your Values [https://www.asyousow.org/invest-your-values], Search to find what’s hidden inside your 401(k) or personal investments, and how to reinvest
Investigate [https://investigate.afsc.org/], American Friends Service Committee Corporate (ir)Responsbility Tracker
New York City Comptroller 2017 Statement [https://comptroller.nyc.gov/newsroom/comptroller-stringer-and-trustees-new-york-city-pension-funds-complete-first-in-the-nation-divestment-from-private-prison-companies/] on Divestment from Private Prison Companies
People Over Profits [https://popaz.org/coalition], A powerful alliance of organizations united in removing profit from Arizon’a criminal legal system
Unitarian Universalist Commitment to Socially Responsible Investing [https://www.uua.org/finance/investing-endowments/sri], ensuring that our investments are aligned with our values
Unitarian Universalist Common Endowment Fund [https://uucef.org/2026/05/stewardship-update-selling-private-prisons-in-the-cef-advocacy-portfolio/], reviewing the alignment of its Advocacy Portfolio with the values and policy commitments of the Association
Wardens from Wall Street: Prison Privatization [https://abolishprivate.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Wardens_Wall_Street_Prison_Privatization.pdf], the second in a series of six pastoral statements by Catholic Bishops of the South on the Criminal Justice process and a gospel response.
Worth Rises [https://worthrises.org/], Dismantling the Prison Industry
Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe [https://sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]
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