Four people detained at an immigration detention center in New Jersey have escaped, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
The detainees were being held at the Delaney Hall facility in Newark, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been holding individuals who are facing possible deportation. The four people were unaccounted for Thursday night, and federal authorities were looking into whether they were still on the grounds of the facility or had somehow escaped, senior officials said.
“DHS has become aware of 4 detainees at the privately held Delaney Hall Detention facility escaping,” according to a statement from the agency. “Additional law enforcement partners have been brought in to find these escapees.” It added that an alert had been made to area law enforcement and encouraged the public to call 911 or the ICE tip line if they had relevant information.
DHS and the FBI are offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to their arrest. They are deemed "public safety threats" by the agency, which identified the four men as Franklin Norberto Bautista-Reyes, Joel Enrique Sandoval-Lopez, Joan Sebastian Castaneda-Lozada and Andres Pineda-Mogollon. They are from Honduras and Colombia, and each had previously been arrested in New Jersey based on different reasons.
The GEO Group, which is the private company that runs the facility, said that it was working with ICE to find the men.
"The safety and security of the Delaney Hall Facility and our neighbors in the local community is our top priority," a spokesperson for the company said in a statement. "Contrary to current reporting, there has been no widespread unrest at the Facility."
The wife of one detainee told NBC New York she rushed over to Delaney Hall after she got a call from her husband about a lockdown in his pod and a protest about inhumane conditions at the detention center. She said she was worried about her husband’s safety.
Local and state authorities were notified of the missing detainees, and some additional resources were called in to assist with the situation, according to the senior officials.
Delaney Hall made headlines in May after protests broke out at the 1,000-bed, privately owned facility.
Democratic U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver was charged in a criminal complaint with two assault charges stemming from a May 9 visit to the center. She was indicted Tuesday; The indictment includes three counts of assaulting, resisting, impeding and interfering with federal officials.
By law, members of Congress are authorized to go into federal immigration facilities as part of their oversight powers, even without notice. Congress passed a 2019 appropriations bill that spelled out the authority.
McIver said in a statement that she had “serious concerns about the reports of abusive circumstances at the facility,” and that her office had reached out to ICE for answers.
At the same visit that resulted in McIver’s charges, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested on a trespassing charge, which was later dropped. Baraka later filed a lawsuit against acting U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba over what he said was a malicious prosecution.
In a statement, Baraka expressed concern for what had transpired at Delaney Hall on Thursday, “ranging from withholding food and poor treatment, to uprising and escaped detainees.”
The mayor went on to say the situation “lacks sufficient oversight of every basic detail — including local zoning laws and fundamental constitutional rights. This is why city officials and our congressional delegation need to be allowed entry to observe and monitor, any why private prisons pose a very real problem to our state and its constitution...We must put an end to this chaos and not allow this operation to continue unchecked.”
