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Live worms in prisoners’ food; green-colored sausage patties; black mold allegedly being pumped through the air ducts, and a pregnant prisoner writhing in pain with no access to medical care.
These are just some of the torturous conditions that sparked a surprise congressional inspection Monday inside Delaney Hall ICE prison in Newark, New Jersey — where a prisoner died in December after just one day inside — led by recently elected New Jersey Congresswoman Analilia Mejia, along with Reps. LaMonica McIver and Rob Menendez.
[WATCH ABOVE MY ON-THE-GROUND REPORT OUTSIDE DELANEY HALL ICE PRISON]
“The food was disgusting, it had worms,” one wife of an ICE prisoner inside ICE’s Delaney Hall prison told Status Coup about prisoners being fed live worms in their food in recent days.
Once the ICE guards caught wind that the Congressman and Congresswoman were arriving to inspect, they instantly morphed their behavior from verbally abusive and taunting to prisoners to attentive, Gabriel Soto, the wife of prisoner Martin Soto, told Status Coup.
Soto told Status Coup that when prisoners complained about the maggots in their food, guards taunted them, telling them to “eat it or starve.”
[See below for Soto’s GoFundMe to help afford bond for her husband, who has lost 30 pounds inside Delaney Hall in just a few months].
“The guards are usually never this attentive, as soon as everyone was locked up in their cells, they started moving tables, cleaning and wiping down, putting hangers on the clothes, and cleaning all the laundry bins,” Soto translated for us as she spoke on the phone with a prisoner inside who was describing in Spanish ICE guards’ scrambling to clean as the Congresspeople arrived.
On Sunday, Gabriela found out that guards served prisoners in unit 2A and 2B live worms, discolored sausage, and chunky milk.
“All of my worst fears feel confirmed,” Rep. Mejia said at a press conference after she inspected inside for several hours. She described seeing grown male prisoners cry and speaking with a female prisoner who suffered a miscarriage inside the prison after guards ignored her pleas for medical care.
In an interview with Status Coup, Rep. Mejia commented on allegations of black mold and other environmental toxins growing inside the prison.
“As I was walking around I mentioned to Congresswoman McIver that I was feeling irritation in my throat,” she said. But speaking with Status Coup outside, she noted that she was outside the prison, the throat irritation had gone away.
“That air [inside] is not circulating as it should; the stench that we smell here is actually heightened in there because of the heat, because of the lack of air circulation,” Rep. Mejia told Status Coup.
Given the owner of the prison, for-profit prison operator GEO Group, made $254 million in profit in 2025, I asked Rep. Mejia if a Democratically controlled White House and Congress would investigate, and potentially prosecute, executives at the company over the torturous conditions inside.
“It is our duty to uphold the law and it is our duty to uphold civil rights and civil liberties; if we allow undocumented immigrants to lose their constitutional protections, we have in effect allowed ourselves to be stripped of it as well.”
Status Coup has been reporting ON THE GROUND covering ICE TERROR for nearly a year in LA, NYC, Alligator Alcatraz, Chicago, Charlotte, & Minneapolis. PLEASE SUPPORT US for as low as $5 bucks a month.
