As reports of dire conditions inside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Newark, New Jersey, continue to make headlines, the family of the facility’s namesake, Geraldine Owen Delaney, said she would be “horrified” by what has become of the building that bears her name.
Marianne Delaney told MS NOW that Delaney Hall was originally established as a halfway house for low-level offenders in 2000 in honor of her aunt, whom she said was a “pioneer in addiction and alcohol treatment.”
“She was all about recovery and healing and giving people a second chance in life,” Marianne Delaney said. “She had a passionate love for alcoholics and their suffering, because she had been there herself, and she knew what treatment was needed to save people. This is what she intended for Delaney Hall. It was her dream.”
Geraldine Owen Delaney died two years before Delaney Hall opened its doors. Over time, it transformed from a minimum-security facility to an overflow area for the nearby Essex County Jail before becoming an ICE detention center in 2011.
“It was intended as a 250-bed facility to do good, to save people’s lives, not to be a warehouse for human despair, which it appears to have turned into,” Marianne Delaney said, adding that now it’s the “antithesis of everything my aunt stood for.”