Latimer Calls for Detention Centers to be Closed

From the outside, the building looked like an Amazon distribution center. But once he was able to peer through the windows, Congressman Latimer saw that there were people, not packaged goods, stored inside. That was the sobering reality Latimer confronted during a July 31 visit to the Delaney Detention Center in Newark with Bronx Congressman and colleague Ricky Torres.

It took Latimer and Torres three weeks to get an appointment to visit the facility that is run by private contractor GEO and is one of the largest detention centers in the country, holding approximately 800 people. There Latimer found the detainees housed 9 to a room in triple bunkbeds. He saw them staring into their hands and sensed they had been “stripped of their humanity.”

Ironically, Delaney Hall was originally built to be used as a halfway house for recovering drug addicts. According to the NY Times, it was named for Geraldine Owen Delaney, known to some by her initials — which spell “God,” a nod to her work in the addiction recovery space — and known to others as “Mrs. D.” To her nieces and nephews, she was Gerry. Now those descendants are asking for the facility to be closed or for the name to be changed.
The day after Latimer’s visit, there was a death at Delaney Hall and the Attorney General of the State of New Jersey has announced an investigation into possible civil rights violations. Latimer said that when Congress goes back into session in August he plans to call for an investigation as well.

Latimer, who ran the Westchester County Prison System when he served as County Executive, said he does not believe in privatized prisons who do not have the same accountability as public facilities.

He also does not believe that mass detention centers are a solution to the countries immigration issues. In fact, he said, our country needs immigrants and needs workers. He said, “They are a part of the economic force of our area…. You go into restaurant kitchens, gardening businesses, and nursing homes and you meet lots of folks who are recent immigrants. They have work visas and they pay taxes… they are not the rapists, criminals and murderers that Kristi Noem and Markwayne Mullin would have you believe they are.

Many of these immigrants came to the United States seeking asylum from dangerous countries and now they are being picked up by masked ICE agents, without badges, and without the proper training to learn how to de-escalate conflict in the streets. These agents are handed billy clubs and told to go out and crack heads.”

People with dark skin and those from other countries are unfairly targeted. It’s racism. He said, “I think there is a way to have a strong economy and to work humanely together – and not create armed camps.”

He offered an ominous thought about the concept of people being rounded up without cause and shipped to detention centers…. “Who is to decide that other people won’t be housed there – who is to say that in the future we won’t be housed there for expressing our views?”

Here is Latimer speaking about detention centers on the floor of U.S. Congress: