Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said detainees were receiving proper care despite protests and allegations of poor conditions.
President Donald Trump has dismissed protesters outside a New Jersey immigration detention facility as “fake” and “paid for” as demonstrations intensified and Democratic lawmakers demanded investigations into conditions inside the center.
Video footage from the scene showed protesters clashing with ICE agents outside the Delaney Hall detention facility in Newark, New Jersey, on May 25 as tensions escalated over immigration enforcement.
Speaking during a Cabinet meeting on May 27, Trump praised federal immigration officials amid allegations of medical neglect and “perpetrating cruelty” against people.
“These aren’t protesters,” Trump said. “These people are fake. They’re all paid for.”
Trump also said Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials “run the finest facilities anywhere in the world of their type.”
The comments came after days of protests outside Delaney Hall, where detainees and family members accused officials of poor medical care and mistreatment inside the privately run immigration detention center.
The controversy escalated this week after Reps. Daniel Goldman (D-N.Y.) and Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) conducted an oversight visit at the Newark facility.
Nadler said in a May 27 post on X that what he observed inside the detention center was “deeply disturbing” and warranted further investigation.
“The medical neglect—denying people access to potentially life-saving care and withholding necessary medicine—is abhorrent,” Nadler wrote, calling for Delaney Hall to be closed immediately.
Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) said he rushed to the facility on May 24 after hearing detainees had launched a hunger strike.
In a series of May 24 posts on X, Kim described seeing an 18-year-old high school student “crying and saying she just wanted to graduate senior year,” a pregnant woman allegedly unable to receive full obstetric care, and another woman who allegedly suffered a miscarriage while detained.
Kim said that the Trump administration and congressional Republicans are spending “tens of billions of dollars” on detention policies that he described as “perpetrating cruelty against people.”
