Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them

Difficult conditions and inadequate staffing in a privately owned ICE detention center in Newark are degrading the health of detainees inside, a pair of New Jersey U.S. representatives said after a tour Monday.

Rep. Rob Menendez and Rep. Nellie Pou, both Democrats representing districts in urban North Jersey, conducted an oversight visit to Delaney Hall on Doremus Avenue.

They told reporters that dozens of detainees inside complained of inadequate medical care, difficulty visiting with family and friends, dirty air, and low-quality food.

“What they are doing inside of there is trying to create conditions where people are so demoralized that they will sign voluntary departure papers to not have to be in there anymore,” said Menendez, who noted he’s seen similar conditions during prior visits. “They're trying to break people so people give up.”

Reporters were not allowed to join the oversight visit. The congressmembers and their staff were not able to bring in their phones or take photos inside the facility.

An ICE spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither did Florida-based The GEO Group, which operates the ICE detention center.

It sits between the Essex County jail and an NJ Transit bus garage on Doremus Avenue, a major truck route. Smells from a nearby sewage treatment plant and a fat rendering facility hang in the air.

Delaney Hall can hold up to about 1,200 detainees, though the actual population fluctuates. Pou said roughly 680 detainees are currently at Delaney Hall. She and Menendez said they met with detainees from around the globe, that none of them had criminal records, and that many of them had long-established lives in America.

Pou was making her first oversight visit to Delaney Hall. She called it an “eye-opening” experience. She said there was just one doctor and a handful of nurse practitioners in the facility’s medical clinic. Pou said she was concerned the medical staffing was not enough to handle emergencies.

Menendez said ICE and The GEO Group have repeatedly said that detainees who request medical care are seen within 24 hours. But he questions that. In one instance, Menendez said, a man described waiting over two months to see a dentist about mouth pain. Menendez said the man still has not gotten dental care, and instead is being given pain medication.

“ All the individuals that we spoke to, when you mention the idea that they've been seen within 24 hours, they like, they sigh in disbelief,” Menendez said. “Because that's not the reality.”

Visitation limits remain a complaint among detainees and their families, Pou said. Visitors are only allowed on the weekend and on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Visitors often wait hours outside the facility before being let in.

There is limited parking available, and visitors risk being denied entry if they don’t comply with the facility’s dress code. Once inside, visitors have a limited time to meet with a detainee, and the clock starts before the check-in process is done.

The visit comes roughly a year after federal agents arrested Newark Mayor Ras Baraka while he was protesting the facility’s opening; the charges against Baraka were later dropped.

Menendez, Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman and Rep. LaMonica McIver were also there that day, trying to make an unannounced oversight visit. The three representatives were caught up in the scuffle around Baraka’s arrest. McIver was later indicted on charges that she impeded federal officers; that case is ongoing, with a hearing scheduled for June.

Menendez said the Department of Homeland Security has maintained a professional relationship with Congressional offices since last year’s incident. But he said GEO Group staff at Delaney Hall “hates when we’re here.”

Menendez said he doubts the facility can be reformed.

“ From Day One, we've said this place should not be open,” Menendez said. “We continue to believe that it shouldn't be open and I don’t think that there’s a way to improve it.”

The visit comes as Congress debates a Republican proposal to give ICE another $70 billion for immigration enforcement.

Menendez said he hopes New Jersey’s three Republican representatives visit Delaney Hall before they decide to vote on the measure.

Twenty-eight-year-old O'Shae Sibley was “living his best life” before a Brooklyn teen fatally stabbed him, a prosecutor alleged on Monday in opening statements at the trial of the accused killer in Brooklyn Supreme Criminal Court.

Sibley, a Black, gay, professional dancer from Philadelphia, had rented a car with four of his friends on July 29, 2023, and spent the day celebrating one of their birthdays at an LGBTQ-friendly beach in New Jersey, Senior Assistant District Attorney Sarah Jafari said. They stopped at a gas station on Coney Island Avenue in Midwood on their way home to Brooklyn.

As they refueled and danced to Beyoncé outside the car, the friends encountered a “hateful” verbal assault of racist and homophobic slurs from a group that included then-17-year-old Dmitriy Popov, who had been working in a smoke shop nearby, Jafari said.

The verbal altercation turned deadly when Popov pulled a knife from his pocket and stabbed Sibley in the torso.

Popov, 20, faces charges of second-degree murder as a hate crime, criminal possession of a weapon and several other crimes. He could spend up to 25 years to life in prison if convicted of the most serious charge. The Brooklyn district attorney’s office is trying him as an adult.

Popov’s defense attorney, Mark Pollard, argued Monday that his client was acting in self-defense. He described Popov as a “frail, skinny, puny” teen facing a group of “strong, in-shape” men. The attorney also said Sibley hit Popov.

“This is about a few terrifying seconds in the life of a 17-year-old boy — not man,” Pollard said, adding: “He was afraid for his life in a chaotic situation.”

But Jafari said Sibley was targeted because he was an “out and proud” Black, gay man, dancing in a bathing suit.

“You cannot kill someone because you are offended,” she told jurors. “You cannot kill someone because how they live their life is not in line with what you think is right.”

Sibley’s loved ones filled several benches in the 20th-floor courtroom — many of them dressed in black. His mother occasionally dabbed her eyes with a tissue during opening statements. One man hunched over in his seat and gasped for breath.

A handful of Popov’s relatives sat behind the defendant on the other side of the courtroom. Popov sat quietly next to his attorney, wearing a white, button-down shirt and navy blue pants. At one point, he jotted down notes on a yellow legal pad.

Jafari described two alternate worlds playing out half a block apart just before Sibley’s death. At the gas station, she said, Sibley and his friends were in their bathing suits, enjoying a beautiful summer night. It was the summer of Beyoncé’s “Renaissance” tour, and the group was dancing to her music.

“They were expressing themselves,” she said.

Popov and his friends were working at a smoke shop down the block, huddling around a screen to watch “half-naked men” wrestle in an Ultimate Fighting Championship match, the prosecutor said.

When the group noticed Sibley and his friends dancing, they decided that this type of behavior in their neighborhood was not OK and walked over to the gas station to confront them, Jafari said.

When the two groups collided, the tension quickly escalated, according to the prosecutor. The group from the smoke shop called Sibley and his friends racial slurs and told them to “get the f—k out of here,” Jafari said.

“We don’t do that s—t. We’re Muslims,” someone said, according to the prosecutor.

One of Sibley’s friends, who was only wearing a jock strap, ran back to the car to put on shorts, Jafari said. Sibley approached Popov, and his friends apologized for making them uncomfortable, the prosecutor said. But the group from the smoke shop kept cursing and telling Sibley and his friends to leave. Popov recorded on his phone.

A clerk at the gas station came outside to defuse the situation, and for a moment it seemed like the argument was over, Jafari said. Both sides walked away, except for Popov, who continued to call out insults and slurs, she said. Then, the prosecutor said, Popov reached into his pocket, hunched over and pulled out a knife.

“Come on, get stabbed,” he said, according to Jafari.

Sibley stepped toward Popov with his palms open, positioning himself between the knife and his friend, the prosecutor said. The teen stabbed Sibley in the torso, slicing five-and-a-half inches into his body and puncturing his heart, Jafari said.

Popov went back to the smoke shop with the bloody knife, rang up a customer and then fled in a car, she said. Meanwhile, Sibley lay on the ground, his pink bathing suit turning red. He was pronounced dead at Maimonides Hospital shortly after.

Popov’s defense attorney said video of the incident would make clear that Sibley and his friends were pursuing his client, not the other way around.

“His perception at the time was fear,” Pollard said.

But Jafari said Popov “had so many opportunities to leave, to walk away.”

“He chose not to,” she said. “He used deadly physical force against O’Shae for no justifiable reason.”

The trial comes nearly three years after Sibley’s killing rattled New York City’s Black and queer communities. Following Sibley’s death, fellow dancers gathered at the gas station on Coney Island Avenue to vogue in his honor and call for justice.

In the year Sibley was killed, New York City recorded the most hate crimes against gay men and Black people in New York City since at least 2019, with 116 and 56 reported incidents, respectively, according to NYPD data.

At least 11 hate crimes against LGBT people and 10 against Black people were reported in the first three months of this year, according to the most recent police data.

Three New Yorkers who were passengers onboard the cruise ship that has been racked by a deadly hantavirus outbreak are now being held in Nebraska along with other American passengers, according to state health officials.

The virus that spread on the MV Hondius cruise ship, known as the Andes virus, is a form of hantavirus that can cause severe pulmonary disease, and three people tied to the outbreak have died so far, according to the World Health Organization. The final passengers were evacuated from the ship on Monday, Reuters reported.

One of the three New Yorkers who was on the ship is a New York City resident and the other two are residents of Orange and Westchester counties, respectively, Dr. James McDonald, the state health commissioner, said Monday.

"At this point, it is important to emphasize that there is no immediate risk to the public,” McDonald said in a statement. “We will continue to monitor the situation and provide updates as needed."

The New Yorkers exposed to the virus are expected to be subject to a 42-day monitoring period, but McDonald said health officials are still gathering information on how long they will remain in Nebraska.

A total of 18 American passengers were on board the MV Hondius, according to the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services. HHS posted on X Sunday that one American passenger on the ship had mild symptoms of the Andes virus and another tested “mildly” positive on a PCR test.

HHS said most of the American passengers were being airlifted from the ship to a Regional Emerging Special Pathogen Treatment Center at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Two of the passengers, including the one with mild symptoms, were being taken to a similar treatment center at Emory University in Atlanta, according to HHS.

The New Jersey Department of Health said Friday that two residents had been exposed to someone who was on the ship, but were not passengers themselves.

The Andes virus is the only type of hantavirus known to spread from person to person and symptoms can be severe, including aches, fever, gastrointestinal issues and trouble breathing, according to the CDC. But infectious disease experts say the Andes virus is not likely to cause widespread illness, since it doesn’t get transmitted easily.

Still, Gov. Kathy Hochul said Monday she has “activated” public health experts in the state to “start preparing New York for worst case scenarios,” just in case.

Hochul expressed doubts that the CDC is well-equipped to contain the virus should it spread. “I know that over a year ago there were significant cuts at the CDC as part of the Elon Musk DOGE cuts,” Hochul said during a press conference Monday, referring to the Department of Government Efficiency.

“I cannot, as governor, not be prepared for anything that could happen,” Hochul added.