Family members visiting the Delaney Hall Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Newark, New Jersey, say guards have repeatedly turned them away for violating a dress code that applies to children as young as 11 months. According to interviews The Guardian conducted with visitors and activists outside the facility, the rules are applied arbitrarily, with some items allowed one week and rejected the next, and enforcement varies by the officer on duty.
Gabriela Soto, whose husband has been detained at Delaney Hall since January, said she has been rejected more than 10 times on dress-code grounds. On one occasion, a guard cited her 11-month-old’s onesie as “too provocative.” On another, guards rejected her four-year-old daughter’s leggings. “How is that provocative if she’s only four years old?” Soto told The Guardian. Soto has joined protests outside the facility demanding her husband’s release.
Other families report similar experiences. A 16-year-old girl was rejected for a knee-length black smock dress that, she said, complied with her school’s uniform policy. The facility’s published guidelines allow “skirts and dresses … which extend to knee, seated.” Daphinne Bazzoni, 24, was turned away over her off-white Crocs, one of the most commonly rejected items. A guard rejected Isaias Felix for knee-length white shorts and his wife for a bodysuit, saying she needed to wear something “more decent.” “I feel a little offended. We’re already going through a hard time,” Felix told The Guardian.
A pile of Crocs, sandals, and other forbidden footwear frequently accumulates by the clothing bins volunteers operate outside the gate. The #EyesOnIce protest group and other volunteers hand out free clothes to rejected visitors, allowing many to enter after changing. On one Tuesday alone, volunteer records documented more than a dozen rejections, including five over footwear.
The dress code’s official language states it applies to visitors aged 12 and older, but activists and visitors say guards have rejected preschool and elementary-age children. Kathy O’Leary, a veteran activist with Pax Christi USA, called the enforcement unusually strict. “Delaney Hall is weird,” she told The Guardian, comparing it to a nearby ICE facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey, which she said “has Catholic school uniform rules.” In Delaney Hall, she said, “your skirt has to be below your knees.” She said she had never seen another facility reject children based on their clothing.
Visitors say the uncertainty worsens an already stressful experience. Valeria, a young mother raising an infant, said a dress code that appears to change without warning has delayed or shortened her visits. “I could wear these pants for a week, and out of nowhere, they’re like, ‘You cannot come in this,’” she told The Guardian, her infant in her arms. “It depends on the officer.”
In one episode, Soto brought her daughter to Delaney Hall on the child’s fourth birthday with a drawing for her father. Guards refused to let the drawing in. When Soto handed the drawing to guards for inspection, she said, they ripped it in front of her daughter, who burst into tears. “She was destroyed,” Soto said. Since then, Soto said she avoids engaging with guards: “I don’t even look at anybody.”
The dress-code complaints are among broader allegations against the facility, operated by Geo Group. New Jersey has sued the company to allow state health inspectors greater access, alleging “unsanitary food and drink preparation and storage” and “potentially inadequate tuberculosis infection control practices,” according to the legal filing cited by The Guardian. The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that health inspectors had already been granted access to the facility and that there was no hunger strike, but protesters continue to demand an end to what they call inhumane conditions.