The Corruption of Pam Bondi's DOJ
Justice under the Trump administration is for sale.
Last Friday afternoon, I was driving to Pennsylvania when I got wind of a protest happening at Delaney Hall, an immigrant detention facility in Newark, New Jersey. Since I was nearby, I headed down to Delaney Hall to see what was happening. By the time I arrived, Mayor Ras Baraka had been arrested, a scuffle had broken out between ICE agents and three members of Congress and the city was on edge.
ICE housed migrants at Delaney Hall for several years during the Obama Administration and into the first year of Trump’s first term. In 2021, New Jersey enacted a law banning the state from renewing or signing detention contracts with ICE, parts of which a federal judge struck down in 2023.
Right after Trump re-entered the White House, Florida-based private prison contractor GEO Group announced that it had received “a 15-year, fixed-price contract by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (‘ICE’) to provide support services for the establishment of a federal immigration processing center at the company-owned, 1,000-bed Delaney Hall Facility (the “Facility”) in Newark, New Jersey.”
The first migrants arrived at Delaney Hall on May 1.
In late March, the city of Newark sued GEO Group in state court, claiming that Delaney Hall lacked a valid certificate of occupancy. The case has since been transferred to federal court, where it is now pending. The Washington Post picks up the thread:
At a rally in March, Baraka told a crowd of about 300 immigrant rights activists that he would padlock the building if necessary to prevent it from opening, according to local reports.
On Friday, Baraka and three Democratic members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation — Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman, Robert Menendez Jr. and LaMonica McIver — attempted to inspect the facility during an unannounced visit.
Chaos erupted, and Baraka was arrested and charged with trespassing.
Alina Habba, the U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey (you read that right) tweeted that Baraka ignored “multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself.”
The truth is quite different. ICE agents allowed Baraka to walk beyond the gate of the facility but after leaving the grounds, he was arrested for trespassing. His supporters, including the three members of Congress, created a cordon to protect him, a confrontation ensued and masked ICE agents appeared to manhandle 80-year-old Congresswoman Watson Coleman.
Despite this, the members of Congress went inside Delaney Hall to perform their oversight responsibilities.
Laughably, ICE agents later accused Rep. LaMonica McIver of “body slamming” them. The Trump Administration is now “actively investigating” the three members of Congress and that arrests are “definitely on the table.”
“Whether you are a civilian, a mayor, or a member of Congress, if you are storming an an ICE detention facility and putting law enforcement and detainees at risk, you can bet that we will arrest you and you will face the law,” a DHS spokeswoman told CNN on Saturday. “You will face justice.”
By the time I arrived at Delaney Hall on Friday, Baraka had already been transported to a different facility in Newark for processing, the lawmakers had left and so had most protesters. There were several ICE agents milling around, wearing masks.
I then got back on I-78 West to continue my drive to Pennsylvania. And that’s when I saw a long procession of about fifteen-to-twenty motorcycles bringing up the rear on an unmarked van with blacked out windows leaving Newark and heading west on I-78. The motorcycle riders were wearing flack jackets that said “Sheriff” or “Police” on them but, strangely, without identifying which sheriff’s office or police department they represented. (Both the Newark Police Department and the Essex County Sheriff’s Office, the county in which Delaney Hall is located, have insignia on their uniforms.)
ICE agents have repeatedly been identified as wearing uniforms that say POLICE on them, despite not being sworn police officers.
On the way out of Newark, I-78 splits off into local and express lanes. The caravan stayed in the local lanes and I merged onto the express lanes to catch up to the van.
It was raining heavily and the van’s windows were tinted but I could make out a head in the back seat. It could not have been Baraka, who had been transferred to a facility in Newark. I eventually lost the procession as traffic in their lanes built up.
The decision to potentially charge three members of Congress and to prosecute Baraka raise several questions beyond the legal absurdity of investigating lawmakers for performing their constitutionally protected duties.
Any decision to prosecute members of the legislative branch would come not from Habba, the U.S. Attorney in New Jersey, but from Main Justice in Washington. Ultimately, the decision rests with Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Despite the barrels of ink spilled on this story, I have not seen any mention of Bondi’s massive conflict of interest with respect to the events of last Friday at Delaney Hall. Prior to becoming the top law enforcement officer in the land, Bondi was a highly-paid lobbyist with Ballard Partners, where she represented the GEO Group, which now runs Delaney Hall and stands to profit mightily from its continued operations in Newark.
George Zoley, executive chairman of The GEO Group, said that Delaney Hall, which is by far the largest ICE detention facility in the Northeast, presents an “unprecedented opportunity to help the federal government meet its expanded immigration enforcement priorities.” He added, “Our company-owned Delaney Hall Facility will play an important role in providing needed detention bedspace and support services for ICE in the Northeast.”
According to the Federal Procurement Database System, the Delaney Hall contract is worth $1.2 billion.
Lest anyone thinks that the GEO Group does not need independent oversight, its track record in protecting the people in its care is abysmal. In 2017, Washington State successfully sued GEO Group for paying immigrant detainees at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma only $1 per day for labor. A federal jury awarded $17.3 million in back pay to the detainees and an additional $5.9 million to the state, totaling over $23 million. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld this verdict in 2025, affirming that GEO must comply with state minimum wage laws despite operating under a federal contract.
In Aurora, Colorado, unannounced inspectors found violations ranging from unnecessary handcuffing to food-borne illness risks at a GEO Group-run ICE facility in 2019. Two years ago, GEO Group was sued for forcing inmates in its Adelanto, California facility to use toxic cleaning chemicals.
The New Yorker reported that at the The Reeves County Detention Center in Texas:
“A quota written into the contract with the GEO Group stipulated that at least ten per cent of the bed space in the facility needed to be reserved for isolation cells. That was double the space allocated at federal facilities run by the B.O.P., and the result, the A.C.L.U. noted, was a “contractual” incentive for putting prisoners “in extreme isolation whenever the prison is filled to capacity.” In 2017, after further complaints, the federal government closed the prison and transferred the inmates to other facilities across the country. There they found vermin infestations, spoiled food, a shortage of medical staff, and cells that were routinely flooded with raw sewage.
Is it any wonder that Watson Coleman, Menendez and McIver wanted to perform a spot inspection of a GEO Group-run facility in their state and that Baraka has raised questions about a company with that kind of track record running a facility in his city?
Bondi represented GEO Group knowing its history full-well. Now, she is in charge of potentially prosecuting elected officials who want to hold her old client accountable.
Justice under the Trump administration is for sale. And Bondi established the going price even before she joined the cabinet.
Further Reading:
The Washington Post: What to know about Delaney Hall, where Newark’s mayor was arrested
The GEO Group. Inc: The GEO Group Awarded 15-Year Contract by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for Company-Owned, 1,000-Bed Delaney Hall Facility in New Jersey
Superior Court of New Jersey: Law Division: Essex County: City of Newark v. GEO Re-Entry Group, LLC
NewsNation: Multiple Democrats facing criminal charges amid NJ altercation
USA Today: Dems face criminal probe after ICE detention center scuffle
Rep. Mike Thompson: Thompson Calls on ICE to Remove "POLICE" from Jackets and Vests
El Pais: How do you identify an ICE agent?
Open Secrets: Lobbyist Activity: Pam Bondi
The City: Prison Company Foresees ‘Unprecedented’ Revenue, Announces Massive Newark ICE Lock-Up
Federal Procurement Database System: The GEO Group, Inc.
Reuters: GEO Group can't nix $23 mln verdict over immigrant detainee pay
Office of Inspector General - Department of Homeland Security: Concerns about ICE Detainee Treatment and Care atFour Detention Facilities
NPR: GEO Group sickened ICE detainees with hazardous chemicals for months, a lawsuit says
The New Yorker: A New Study Uncovers Troubling Information About Immigrant-Only Prisons
Last night I saw something about this on Rachel Maddow’s show. They are a big agency but they are investigators in cyber type crimes and other issues. Crowd control and immigration enforcement not their training or area. I don’t know how they got involved with ICE. The truth is we are at a point in our society where each person is going to have to decide what side they’re on. A whole lot of individual characters are shown too at a time like this. I’ve seen it in my own life and I haven’t liked the character some I thought I knew well have revealed. The authorities were going to release the mayor quickly because they knew they better but these immigration enforcing goons are slamming heads into sidewalks before arrest and arresting people trying to complete their green cards. Not being white and having an accent now a crime in this country. We have no clue what’s going on in these ICE jails and lawmakers should be going to them daily demanding to know. Pressure does work.
I protest any ICE actions that violate the sanctity of our streets, homes, churches, hospitals, schools, and workplaces. ICE should honorably uphold immigration law, which means mercifully discriminating between hardened criminals, and good, hardworking people on the fringes of society. Tom Homan is the right person to enforce our immigration laws, but our immigration laws need reform to meet the demand for more vetted, legal immigrants. We have a labor shortage. Therefore, I ask our pastors, priests, imams, and rabbis to be allowed, in the meantime, to oversee ICE activities, and to prevent nativist, racist men from hiring masses of jackbooted thugs to break up families, invade hallowed spaces, and desecrate holy monuments. Illegal kidnapping and disappearing of honest people should end immediately. Representatives who applaud these mass arrests and disappearances should be condemned. We, the people, oppose a racist, Nazi-like state. We oppose Gestapo-like militias preying on the powerless. There is nothing Christian about terrorizing families outside the law.