Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin on Wednesday flamed detainees who launched a hunger strike at a New Jersey Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility over the weekend.
Hundreds of detainees at Delaney Hall in Newark have been on a hunger strike since Friday, claiming they are being subjected to poor conditions at the ICE detention facility, WABC reported. Mullin said Wednesday during a Cabinet meeting that any illegal immigrants staging the hunger strike “can go back to their country and get whatever food they want,” adding that “this isn’t Holiday Inn.”
“It shows this radical left, Democrats’ priorities when they decide to go out and protest a detention center where we’re housing rapists, child predators, murderers, drug dealers,” Mullin said. “And they choose Memorial Day? Of all the day[s] … They say that it’s because they’re on a hunger strike, when it’s only a handful of individuals who refused to eat because they want their ethnic right food. Well they can go back to their country and get whatever food they want.”
“The fact is, we are giving them the calories they want, this isn’t Holiday Inn, we’re giving them sanitation,” he added.
.@SecMullinDHS on the Democrats’ spectacle at the NJ ICE facility: “They say that it’s because they’re on a hunger strike… because they want their ethnic right food. Well, they can go back to their country and get whatever food they want… this isn’t Holiday Inn.” pic.twitter.com/DftNoylQoW— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 27, 2026
DHS maintained in a Monday news release that all of the detainees at the New Jersey ICE facility are being “provided with 3 meals a day, clean water, clothing, bedding, showers, soap, and toiletries.”
“In fact, ICE has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens,” according to DHS’ statement.
Democratic New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill confirmed that she has reached out to federal immigration officials to demand access to Delaney Hall amid the hunger and labor strike, NJ.com reported on Sunday.
Democratic New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim was allegedly pepper sprayed by ICE officers during a protest outside of the immigration detention center.
“Don’t let ICE and this administration lie to you,” Kim wrote Wednesday in an X post. “I saw inside Delaney Hall with my own eyes. The conditions are absolutely unacceptable.”
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