[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 92 (Monday, June 1, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2465-S2466]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              IMMIGRATION

  Mr. KIM. Madam President, I rise today to share stories that I have 
heard from detainees and families at Delaney Hall and to tell you why 
these stories should be a call to action to ground our immigration 
policies in humanity.
  There are, currently, approximately 800 detainees at Delaney Hall, 
which is located in Newark, NJ. Over the past week, it has become an 
example of our broken immigration system.
  We have seen the images, but what you have not heard are the stories. 
It is the stories of people I have met and their families that have 
stayed with me over the past weeks and months. They have stayed with me 
because these are stories of people who are afraid, people who are 
asking to be treated with dignity, people who just want the humanity 
that any of us would ask for.
  I have heard repeatedly--and seen with my own eyes--the substandard 
conditions at Delaney Hall. Food that is inedible. I had a man show me 
a container of milk that was curdled solid because it was clearly not 
stored properly. I have heard about the issues of mold and issues of 
safety and security.
  What I have heard has been unacceptable. The totality of the stories 
that I have heard have been disturbing. But when I think about 
individual people, the failures really come into focus.
  I spoke, over this week, for instance, with a man at Delaney Hall who 
has stage III lung cancer and has not been given the medical care that 
he needs. And he told me he knows his time is short. He actually just 
wants to go back home--to his home country of origin--to spend the rest 
of whatever remains in his life with his family, but he is not able to 
do so.
  I spoke with an 18-year-old high school senior, and all she wanted to 
do was be able to graduate and go to prom. Instead, she is stuck there 
by herself.
  I actually met with her mother outside of the facility. You can 
imagine how worried she was about her 18-year-old high school senior in 
this detention facility by herself.
  This isn't someone who is a hardened criminal or someone we 
desperately need to get off of our streets. It is a kid. It is a high 
school student who is at least spending her time in there trying to 
translate for some of the other detainees that don't speak English. She 
is trying to figure out how to help other people. And, instead, we have 
her stuck in there for an indefinite amount of time. She has no idea 
how long it is going to take to resolve her circumstances. This is 
someone who--as a father, when I think about my own two boys--I worry 
about what is being robbed of her childhood as she is going through 
this situation.
  There is a commonality with a lot of these stories: parents just 
trying to take care of their kids; parents who have been in the United 
States for many decades and many of them married to American citizens, 
many of them parents of American citizens.
  These are people that deserve better, but they aren't getting better 
because we have a fundamentally broken system; a system that is built 
on corruption and profit, fueled by cruelty; a system that strips 
people of their humanity.
  Let's start with the motivating factor of profit that drives some of 
this. Delaney Hall is operated by a company called GEO Group. You may 
not know that name, but it is the largest private prison corporation in 
America, which runs about 20 facilities for ICE, coast to coast--from 
New Jersey to California, from Florida to Pennsylvania, to Texas and 
beyond. They are making a lot of money. They got awarded nearly a 
billion-dollar contract to operate Delaney Hall.
  This is something that is driving so much of the decision making, 
because when they are telling me that they have only one full-time 
doctor for nearly 800 detainees there--many of them have really 
significant healthcare needs--you can understand that they could hire 
more than one doctor. They could hire more doctors, but then that is 
going to be less profit for GEO Group.
  When we are talking about the substandard food, they could get better 
food, at least some quality measure better, without the spoiled and 
disgusting milk that I was talking about. But, again, that would be 
less profit.
  And here is just something that is just driving so much of this for 
so many of the problems that are out there.
  When it comes to our immigration policy, that is no choice to me. 
From what we are seeing in terms of the profits and the conditions that 
are there, we should always be putting people before corporate profits.
  It is not just GEO Group or CoreCivic or these other companies that 
are pushing this forward. We know that we can find ways to be able to 
address this, and it starts with not upholding their standards when it 
comes to these detention facilities.
  At Delaney Hall, we have seen the detainees and the challenges to 
getting access to doctors. I talked to a pregnant woman who is not 
getting the care that she needs when it comes to doctors and medical 
checkups. And she has no idea how long she is going to be there for.
  She literally asked me--she looked in my eyes and said: Do I have to 
be prepared to have a baby in Delaney Hall, in this detention facility?
  And instead of upholding a standard of basic humanity, what we are 
hearing from detainees now is about retaliation for them simply 
speaking out--detainees being transferred now away from their families 
to other detention sites because they were protesting, because of this 
retaliation that is happening before our eyes.
  And, finally, we see a judicial system that has fundamentally failed 
detainees, their families, and our entire immigration system. Simply 
put, there are not nearly enough judges to hear the number of 
immigration cases we face at this moment. We already had a backlog of 
millions of cases before, and it is getting worse and worse.
  And, yes, we see the Republicans here in Congress pushing forward on 
the enforcement, but what is it that we can do to be able to address 
the needs on the judiciary?
  When I was there at Delaney Hall, one of the detainees ran out into 
the hallway to grab a piece of paper off of the bulletin board and 
showed me a piece of paper that said: When the courts come back into 
session, after the holiday weekend, one judge--one immigration judge--
had before them 74 cases in 1 day. How is that a fair process? It is a 
farce--74 cases in 1 day. That is about 5 minutes a case. That is if 
everything goes perfectly back to back, not to mention the translation 
needs of so many. We can do better, and I hope that all of us can agree 
that in this country, the rule of law is sacrosanct, and that is 
something where everybody has the opportunity for making their case in 
court.

  What I have heard at Delaney is disturbing, and what I have seen in 
the brokenness of our immigration system is disheartening. But what we 
need to do is move forward with clarity, and here are three things we 
can immediately focus on:
  First, let's surge the medical support. Again, 1 doctor for 800 
people is not enough, especially when they have such things. ICE has 
something called ICE Health Service Corps. There are other means by 
which we can surge medical support to Delaney and elsewhere to make 
sure that people are not being looked over and their needs passed 
aside. That is something, again, that I hope all of us can agree on.
  No. 2, we need to give people access to the courts. This is not just 
something that I said is important for us to have adherence to the rule 
of law, but it is costing the American people billions of dollars to 
just have this process continue to hold up because when someone is 
there at Delaney Hall 8 months, 10 months, 12 months, or beyond, with 
no sense of when it is going to end, that is on us. We are paying for 
it. The American people are paying for this. It is coming out of our 
pocket at a time when we have this affordability

[[Page S2466]]

crisis and so many people in the country struggling to pay the bills. 
People deserve their day in court, and the American people deserve to 
not have their money wasted by a process that is so clearly broken.
  And, third, we need investigations into the conditions immediately. 
The nearly billion dollars going to GEO Group for Delaney Hall--those 
are your taxpayer dollars. You should know where it is going and how 
they are spending it.
  We should have independent investigations into this and make sure 
that Members of Congress can effectively conduct oversight business 
because I tried to go this past week. I was denied. The guards at the 
gate by Geo Group said: Nope. You can't go inside.
  I had to literally call our old colleague Secretary Mullin to get 
access to this facility that--by the way, I actually called ahead and 
got approval to go inside, but they still stopped me.
  And when I went inside the facility and talked to the head of GEO 
Group in Delaney Hall and explained that his guards prevented me from 
going inside for an authorized visit, he looked me in the eye and 
called me a liar. That is not something that seems like it has any 
semblance of accountability, transparency, or obedience and accordance 
to the rule of law. We can and should do better.
  This is at a time when this Chamber is getting ready this week to 
potentially send upward of another $70 billion for ICE and CBP without 
the reforms, without the accountability and the transparency. GEO Group 
is taking your money, and you should know what they are doing with it.
  These are hard days for my State. Nobody should want the images that 
we have seen over the past week, but even more so, nobody should want 
the conditions to be able to continue, whether it is in Delaney Hall or 
elsewhere around this country because it doesn't just stop at Delaney 
Hall. These problems exist and persist all over the country.
  Delaney Hall isn't one bad apple. It is part of a systemic failure 
that we are witnessing across the Nation. How we move forward is a 
choice, a choice between a status quo of corporate profit and cruel 
policies or moving forward to enforce our laws with humanity.
  It doesn't have to be the way that we have seen, and I would urge my 
colleagues to work with me. Let's make the changes we know we need--not 
just at Delaney Hall but at every detention facility across this 
country--and let's fix this broken system once and for all.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.

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