Republican state lawmaker Paul Kanitra confronted the fury around Delaney Hall with blunt criticism, calling out Democratic leaders for the policies he says invited chaos and false outrage. Protesters insist detainees face harsh treatment and some say they are staging hunger strikes, while the Department of Homeland Security pushed back, saying standards are being met. The standoff has become a flashpoint between calls for tougher immigration enforcement and demands for more humane treatment, with both sides sticking to their narratives. This piece lays out the clash, the direct quotes from those involved, and the sharp partisan lines that define the debate.
Kanitra tore into Democratic officials who showed up at the detention site, arguing their policies created the situation activists are now exploiting. He warned that elected leaders embraced laws he sees as permissive and then played to the cameras when trouble followed. He placed most of the blame on those very policies and the political theater surrounding the protest.
“Democrats created this chaos with all their laws. Gov. Sherrill was in office for a couple of weeks before she passed three radical protective illegal immigration bills, taking the masks off of ICE agents, protecting their [illegal immigrants’] status here, giving them more benefits, and here she is out here knowing full well she wasn’t going to get in,” he said. That line framed his view plainly: policy choices produced the problem and political gestures won’t fix it. Kanitra used the moment to push a law-and-order message rather than sympathy for the photo op.
He dismissed the hunger strike claims as baseless and criticized the protest spectacle as a distraction from the real problem of weak enforcement. “was a performative stunt to try to change the focus from their policies, which have created this chaos, to try to make some sort of sensational news story out of it,” he said, pointing at those who marched to the facility. The lawmaker wanted the public to focus on policy failures and not on staged outrage.
Kanitra also attacked the narrative about conditions inside Delaney Hall by challenging critics on basic facts like who provides services there. “The food service provider here at Delaney Hall is actually the same food service provider that services the $150,000 to $500,000 suites at Met Life Stadium.” He turned to sarcasm to make his point: “It seems to be good enough for those guys, so I assume it’s good enough for our illegal invaders behind us,” he said, pointing back to the facility.
He insisted transparency should calm the critics and that federal officials have already rejected the harshest allegations. “We already heard from Secretary Mullin himself and DHS saying that these were baseless allegations,” he continued. Kanitra put the onus on opponents to show evidence instead of relying on emotional displays.
“I don’t know if they’re expecting the Ritz Carlton behind us, but these people are either here illegally or they were here as part of a privilege, with a visa or other procedure, and then they broke the law and are getting that revoked.” That sentence underscored his broader point: detention is not a vacation and public services are not an entitlement when laws are violated. “They shouldn’t be expecting five-star accommodations here in New Jersey,” he concluded.
On the other side, protesters like Diana Tabor described a very different picture and personal sense of betrayal. She called conditions “very unfair” and said that seeing agents who “look like us” has complicated the protest and raised painful questions about loyalty and ethics. She spoke of long-term commitment from a coalition of groups determined to stay until they see change.
She was explicit about the motives and the coalition’s resolve: she said she was present on her own “on the behalf of constituents in Union County who have suffered due to the misfair treatment of Delaney Hall.” “We’ve come here from different backgrounds, different organizations, we came here with different objectives, but ultimately, we formed a big family, and we have one goal, and we’ve all come together to make that goal,” said Tabor.
Her remarks mixed sympathy for migrants with concern for public safety and resource allocation. “There is credibility in protecting the American people,” she agreed, but stressed alternatives, “I do believe that there are different ways to go about it, not kidnapping people, not putting them in overcrowded detention centers, I would say that we need to find a better way to mitigate that.” “I do think that there are obviously people that come here and do commit crimes, and there are murders and there are rapes and there are robberies and there are people being harmed with the loose borders, and that should be taken care of accordingly, but I think that if we start using our resources adequately and we start using it to actually go against criminals who are hurting people within these borders that we’d get a lot more done,” she said.
“So, I would say that we need to start focusing more on actual crime, and not just profiling people based on what they look like,” Tabor added. “I think that there is a happy medium between protecting human rights and also protecting the country.” Those lines show the tension: calls for compassion paired with demands for smarter enforcement.
The federal response reiterated care standards and basic services at the facility, noting “certified dietitians evaluate meals and that all detainees are provided with three meals a day, clean water, clothing, bedding, showers, soap, and toiletries.” The agency also stressed that detainees “also have access to phones to communicate with their family members and lawyers” and that “ICE has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens.” That official stance deepens the divide over who to trust and what reality actually looks like inside the detention center.
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