Senator Andy Kim of New Jersey spoke to Delaney Hall staff members and to detainees concerned about their access to medical care during a visit to the troubled migrant detention center on Thursday morning.

The Democratic senator sought to inspect Delaney — an emerging flashpoint in America’s immigration debate — amid reports of squalid living conditions, improper medical care and inadequate food. Three Delaney detainees have died in the past eight months.

“Americans are paying the bill for Delaney Hall, and where is that money going?” Mr. Kim said at a news conference outside the building in Newark. “It’s not going to the level of food and medical care that many of us think is needed.”

Other lawmakers who have recently visited the detention center have usually been restricted from walking freely, instead confined to small portions of the 1,000-bed complex.

Mr. Kim, however, was able to spend a little more than an hour having separate conversations with medical staff members and seven detainees. (Mr. Kim said that he was denied access to the general population at Delaney and that he was only able to speak to the seven detainees after working with their families in advance to sign the necessary documents.)

The detainees told him that it was difficult to access medical care, while the medical employees defended their operation, saying it was professional and responsive, Mr. Kim said.

“They’re denying that there was any problems in terms of getting medication, denying that they had any responsibilities for the deaths that occurred within here,” Mr. Kim said. “The detainees continue to talk about a lack of access to prescription medication, or not being given the access to doctors.”

Mr. Kim said that a number of detainees had broken down in tears as they told him that there was usually only one doctor on site.

“Several of them were crying talking about the pain that they’re in,” Mr. Kim said. “One physician for over 800 detainees, that’s not enough.”

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

One of the three detainee deaths went unreported for weeks after federal officials transferred the man to a nearby hospital. The Department of Homeland Security has claimed that the immigrant, Jose Chajon-Raxon, did not die in its care and that ICE was initially unaware of his passing.

Mr. Chajon-Raxon arrived at Delaney Hall on July 18 and a nurse observed him having a seizure the next day, according to federal officials.

“The family said they never received any formal notification of the death,” Mr. Kim said. “For the people who run Delaney, once he left these gates, they were done.

“It’s just so disgraceful in terms of just the lack of accountability and responsibility,” Mr. Kim added.

Delaney Hall, located next to trucking warehouses and a sewage treatment plant, has been the setting of intense and sometimes violent protests after reports of inadequate living conditions surfaced earlier this year. In May, detainees went on a hunger strike and the detention center became a site of prolonged unrest amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

Health inspection reports, court filings and other public records reviewed by The New York Times have provided evidence of adverse conditions inside Delaney.

Mr. Kim previously visited the detention center in June 2025 after turmoil there led to the escape of four detainees. At the time, Mr. Kim said officials had told him that a shoddily constructed wall and a cheap retrofit of the complex, which was previously a drug rehabilitation center and halfway house, had allowed the men to escape.

The detention center is now run by Geo Group, one of the country’s largest private prison companies, under a $1 billion, 15-year federal contract. Delaney reopened as a detention facility in May 2025.

Geo Group referred a request for comment on Thursday to ICE.

This month, the New Jersey attorney general, Jennifer Davenport, announced that she had begun a civil rights inquiry into Delaney, issuing subpoenas and investigating whether officials there had denied detainees their civil rights.

In June, New Jersey State sued the Geo Group after state health officials were denied access to Delaney’s medical unit. That lawsuit remains pending and aims to force the company to grant inspectors full access to the detention center.

“If the Geo Group — with a $1 billion government contract — has nothing to hide and the conditions inside Delaney Hall are as safe and as sanitary as this private corporation and the Trump administration claim,” Gov. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey said in June, “then there is no legitimate reason why my health inspectors are being kept from full access throughout the building.”