Nurse thrown to ground by ICE outside Delaney Hall files federal tort claim

Three have died in custody at Delaney Hall since reopening

On Memorial Day, Norma Bowe was running a mobile health clinic outside Delaney Hall, an immigration detention center in Newark, New Jersey, that holds more than 1,000 people under President Donald Trump’s expanded deportation effort, The Guardian reported. The two-story site, which had previously served as a halfway house and detention center before closing in 2023, is now run by the Geo Group, one of the largest private for-profit prison operators in the United States, under a 15-year, $1 billion federal contract. Ever since the 2020 pandemic, Bowe had been operating the mobile clinic with grant funding and donations, offering free health checkups to undocumented and uninsured people at shelters or community hubs: Covid vaccines, checks for blood pressure, diabetes, blood glucose levels or cancer, mental health screenings, stroke assessments. For the past year, she had parked her brown-and-beige camper van outside the facility most weekends. Converted into a mobile clinic and stocked with sutures, glucometers, and trauma and CPR kits, the van offered health checks to families and protesters.

That day the clinic was busier than usual. Bowe was treating a 10-year-old girl who had begun hyperventilating outside the facility, worried about her father detained inside. She told the child to breathe deeply as she listened to her lungs with a stethoscope, then moved to help someone she thought needed first aid. Instead, she encountered a wall of two dozen ICE agents in paramilitary vests, carrying batons, tasers and firearms, most of their faces masked. Through the building’s opaque windows, Bowe could make out the silhouettes of detainees pressing their bodies against the glass; several hundred had recently gone on hunger strike over what the newspaper described as rotten food, metallic-tasting drinking water, and a lack of access to medications, toilet paper and menstruation products.

Bowe saw a federal agent dragging a young woman across the ground, her bright pink shirt tearing off until she was down to a black bra. “Help me!” the young woman shouted. Decades earlier, as a psychiatric nurse, Bowe had watched colleagues reach for restraints and sedatives when patients became violent. Her instinct was different: “No, let me talk to him.” She would sit beside them and try to calm them down. Now that same instinct kicked in: de-escalate the situation and help the woman being dragged across the ground. Bowe felt herself going into “mom mode” and moved closer. An ICE agent in a cap, black facemask and gloved hands grabbed her from behind and flung her to the sidewalk face-down. She had been abused as a child, an experience that helped propel her toward a life caring for others, and now the violence came from an ICE officer, flinging her “like a javelin,” as she would later describe. “Dr Bowe!” a bystander screamed. “She’s a medical professional!” another shouted.

Bowe was treated at a hospital emergency room. In a Facebook post that day, she wrote: “I am just back home after the ER. These agents have no control and they do what they want with no impunity. The conditions in Delaney Hall are horrible. The water is poisoned. The food has worms. There is inadequate medical help.” The post drew 24,000 comments, including threats against her and racist abuse aimed at the Guardian reporter who commented in support. Bowe signed up for DeleteMe, a service that scrubs personal data from the internet, after the harassment. She knew it was risky to stand up to ICE, she said, especially given the harassment she had already received. As her face hit the concrete, Bowe thought of Alex Pretti, a Minnesota nurse fatally shot by ICE agents five months earlier after he stepped in to help a woman shoved to the ground by federal agents on a Minnesota street.

The ACLU’s July filing of 54 claims in 17 states and Washington, D.C., was made on behalf of people who have suffered violence, abuse and neglect at the hands of federal law enforcement. The filing came as ICE arrests have surged since the summer, making the question of legal recourse increasingly urgent, The Guardian reported. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, asked about the ACLU claims, said: “If the AMERICAN Civil Liberties Union is this committed to the cause of criminal illegal aliens, it should change its name.” A separate ACLU report covering eight states found that over 400 of more than 1,200 incidents involved misconduct by agents, including use of force with batons or grabbing people by their necks.

Three people have died in custody at Delaney Hall since it reopened. Jean Wilson Brutus, 41, died 12 December after a day in custody; ICE said he experienced an unexplained “medical emergency” and died from “natural causes.” Edwin López-Cornejo, 39, who had been detained at Delaney Hall since June and suffered from diabetes and high blood pressure, died after telling his mother he was not receiving his medications regularly during a deadly heatwave. His face and hand felt numb. His mother, Maria Cornejo, identified his body at University hospital. On Saturday, 8 August, Maria wept, holding her husband’s hand as their son’s casket was lowered into the ground. José Chajón-Raxón, in ICE custody since 18 July, died at a hospital after Department of Homeland Security officials said he suffered a seizure. Nationwide, 48 people had died in ICE custody since Bowe first began visiting Delaney Hall, according to ICE data cited by The Guardian.

By winter, at least seven people detained inside Delaney Hall had gone on a hunger strike. One had been “subject to force feeding, hydration, or forced urinary catheterization, or involuntary blood draws,” according to a document published by the ICE Health Service Corps. The Guardian also reported that last May, Bowe had celebrated one of her students who received magna cum laude honors; a few days later, ICE agents picked up the same student’s husband on his way to work. He was taken to Delaney Hall, and the student went from her graduation ceremony to visit him while still wearing her cap and gown. As the weeks stretched on, the student shared reports from visits with her husband inside: many of the prisoners were sick, the cells were freezing, and the water tasted funny and smelled bad.

Bowe was visiting Delaney Hall with the mobile clinic a couple of Saturdays a month, handing out water, food, blankets and baby formula to waiting families, offering checkups or chairs for people to sit, and listening to their stories. One family told her they could not get a man’s bladder cancer medication inside, and without it he could die soon; Bowe tried to make a plea to ICE officials to let her into Delaney to administer his medication, to no avail. Another detainee had recently undergone spinal surgery, and his wife told Bowe he needed antibiotics and physical therapy. Some explained to Bowe that their loved ones inside were complaining of rashes, vomiting or flu. “I found myself writing a lot of medical letters,” Bowe said. Families tried to carry these letters inside hoping to get treatment or medical care for detainees, but they came back defeated, according to The Guardian.

A June report from Physicians for Human Rights, examining 52 deaths during the first 500 days of the second Trump administration, found delays in CPR and cases in which detainees who died from sepsis had received neither blood cultures nor antibiotics. An Associated Press investigation that month found that hundreds of detainees in at least 33 states had alleged in federal lawsuits that immigration detention facilities denied adequate care for conditions including epilepsy, Parkinson’s, cancer and HIV. Letters signed by dozens of detainees and published by Cosecha, an organization advocating for undocumented immigrants, described “inhumane” bathroom conditions, ventilation problems, urinary tract infections, beatings and the use of pepper spray inside. “If you’re sick, you have to submit a request that takes two weeks to be answered — or you never get a response at all,” one letter said. “They only prescribe Tylenol for all ailments.”

Elected officials who have visited or sought to investigate Delaney Hall include Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who was arrested by ICE for trespassing and held for five hours before charges were dropped, and Congresswoman LaMonica McIver, who was charged with three felony counts of assaulting federal agents in connection with the same incident. McIver stood between the mayor and agents, who yanked Baraka’s hands behind his back in handcuffs as he repeated: “I’m not resisting.” The government claimed in a lawsuit that McIver had “slammed” one of the agents; she is fighting the charges. New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill visited the facility the next day and said in a statement: “I say this as a former federal prosecutor: these are the hallmarks of a secret police. They are acting in service to a political agenda, rather than the rule of law, and they are operating without accountability.”

Senator Andy Kim, who on Memorial Day stood between armed ICE agents and protesters in a suit and tie, hands up in a gesture of “stop,” was struck by pepper balls and had to receive aid for burning eyes and throat. With about 600 men and women surviving inside, politicians had continued to press for investigations, inspections and to speak to people inside, The Guardian reported. A woman being held inside told Kim she was forced to handle her miscarriage on her own, and another pregnant woman said she had received no gynecological care. “The cruelty that you see behind me, this is the point,” Kim told a reporter on the scene. “Right now, I’m trying to have them not point guns at us.”

In its 1971 ruling in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, the U.S. Supreme Court made it easier to sue federal officers for constitutional rights violations. In the decades since, the court has “severely dismantled” the remaining rights to sue under Bivens, leaving the Federal Tort Claims Act as the primary remaining option. A claim against city law enforcement will typically identify the officers involved and request police records and body-camera footage, while the municipality can take about 45 days to reply before a plaintiff may file a lawsuit that may lead to a jury trial. Claims against ICE are much more constrained. Under the Federal Tort Claims Act, most claimants must first file an administrative claim and wait up to six months for a response before they can sue. The cases are decided by a judge, not a jury, and offer no punitive damages. “These are essentially negligence claims,” Joanna Schwartz, a professor at UCLA School of Law, told The Guardian. “They’re brought against the United States, and not against individual officers. The case is then decided by a judge, not a jury. There is no entitlement to punitive damages.” As lawyers receive more training in bringing such claims, Schwartz expects their number to grow. It is an uphill battle, the newspaper added, requiring courage, money and persistence; an increasing number of lawyers are taking cases pro bono as people try to exercise their rights within a narrow legal window.

The family of Renee Good, a mother fatally shot by immigration agents in Minneapolis in January, recently filed two federal lawsuits against the agent who shot her and several top Trump administration officials under both Bivens and the Federal Tort Claims Act. Schwartz said Good’s family would face the same barriers as other claimants, “despite intense public attention.” Sean Beckner-Carmitchel, a Los Angeles journalist, filed a tort claim after he said federal immigration officers hurled a gas canister at his forehead. If the canister had hit his face an inch away, he said: “I could have lost an eye, or I could have died.” He told The Guardian: “I didn’t want someone else to have something even worse happen to them. This is the only way that I know how to prevent that.”

Elton Purvis, a Rastafarian priest detained in May at Boston Logan International Airport, said he was repeatedly denied medications for malaria and diabetes. In detention, Purvis suffered from chills, fever and heavy sweating. He was hospitalized seven days after his detainment, and it took several more days for him to be treated for his malaria. Over the next six months, Purvis moved from detention center to detention center, spending the longest stretch at the South Texas ICE processing center in Pearsall, Texas, also operated by the Geo Group. He would later detail how his health mistreatment had caused him to go into a hypoglycemic crash; Purvis also reported bouts of diarrhea, dehydration and malnutrition, repeatedly falling unconscious. In detention, Purvis met many people going through the same predicament, “and sometimes even worse,” he told The Guardian. Filing his claim was for them too, he said: “It feels like standing up for something, and I think this is the best chance I have to do so.”

Two pending federal bills — the Bivens Act and the Constitutional Accountability Act — could allow people to sue federal law enforcement officers for rights violations. Illinois and Vermont have recently passed state laws giving people the right to sue ICE. Schwartz said the legal outcomes of such state rulings had yet to be seen. Until more legislation is passed at the state and national level making it easier for victims and their families to seek accountability, many will continue to be forced to navigate the tremendous hurdles of the Federal Tort Claims Act, The Guardian reported. ACLU deputy executive director Yasmin Cader said her organization intends to press forward. “It’s the one that exists, so we’re going to use it,” Cader told The Guardian. “And we are going to win.”

Members of Cosecha contacted Bowe and asked her to visit Maria Cornejo at her Plainfield home, where Maria was distraught after seeing her son’s body; Maria had medical problems of her own, and Cosecha was worried the shock might worsen her condition. Bowe drove to Maria’s garden apartment, decorated with plants and framed family photos on the walls: Edwin in a suit and tie; his daughter, now 12, in a pink princess gown wearing a tiara and white gloves. Maria sat slumped in a chair. Bowe pricked her finger for a blood glucose screening, gently wrapping a Band-Aid around the tip. She checked in throughout the week leading up to Edwin’s funeral, bringing her protein powder, since Maria had been unable to eat.

If the families of any of the people who died after being detained at Delaney Hall decide to seek legal compensation for damages, they too, like Bowe, will likely have to resort to filing Federal Tort claims. Bowe, a white woman who holds tenure at Kean, told The Guardian she knows she has better security and protections than most people who confront federal agents. “If this is what they’re doing to me outside with impunity, what the heck are they doing to the people inside?” she said. A professor who has taught a “death class” at Kean University for years that takes students into cemeteries, prisons, autopsy rooms and crematories, Bowe has continued to write medical letters on behalf of detainees: “I found myself writing a lot of medical letters.” Detention centers, she said, “should not be death camps. But what is happening to people at the hands of federal immigration officers in the US today is not just incomprehensible — it is preventable.” If she ever gets the chance to face the agents who grabbed her, Bowe told The Guardian, she would ask: “What if I was your mother or sister? Where is your humanity?”