(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . With Migrant Detainees on a Hunger Strike, Here’s a Look at Conditions Inside Delaney Hall [1] ['Paul Glickman', 'Belinda Ridgewood', 'News Corpse'] Date: 2026-05-26 Latif Habraoui’s ordeal confirms the stories of poor food and poor treatment. It also shines a light on ICE’s practice of shuttling people around the country and trying to force them to self-deport. Sandra and Latif Hafraoui headed to Newark airport early one morning last August for a two-week vacation in Florida. Inside the terminal, four ICE agents approached them. “Before I knew what was happening they had handcuffed him and were taking him away,” Sandra said in their testimonial for Leaving MAGA. The agents took Latif, who was dressed in a T-shirt, shorts and sandals, put him into an unmarked van, and drove away. Sandra later learned they had taken him to Delaney Hall Detention Facility in Newark, the target of a prisoner hunger strike since last Friday. Detainees are complaining of poor food, inadequate health care, and abusive guards. The Department of Homeland Security and GEO Group, the private firm running Delaney, say everything is great inside, that the people held there are well fed and well cared for. In Latif’s case, ICE grabbed him because an unscrupulous lawyer he hired back in 2010 had failed to tell him about an immigration court hearing. Since Latif was unaware of the hearing, he didn’t go, and ICE issued a deportation order. But for the next 16 years, the government never took action against Latif. He had a work authorization, and he continued moving through the legal system in an effort to secure permanent residency. Latif has been a productive member of American society since arriving here from Morocco in 1987 at the age of 22. For the past two decades he has worked as a concierge in a residential building in Manhattan. He and Sandra married in 2011. But Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign is all about numbers, not compassion. Latif and Sandra spoke with me at length about his ordeal, which lasted more than three months. “Delaney Hall is horrible,” Latif said. “The staff were nasty to us all the time. The food was terrible, the portions were small. Sometimes you’d get warmed up canned food, or just a bologna sandwich on white bread. There was almost no meat; once a week you got one small piece of chicken. Once they served chickpeas that looked awful.” There’s no consistent meal time, he said. “Breakfast was sometimes at four-thirty in the morning, sometimes at six. Lunch was sometimes at eleven a.m., other times at two or three o’clock. Dinner might come at four-thirty in the afternoon, or eight o’clock at night. And while you’re eating, the guards are always rushing you: ‘Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!’ They always tried to provoke us. While we were trying to sleep, they would be talking loudly in the halls on their walkie-talkies.” Sandra explained that people held at Delaney Hall have to have money added to an account to make calls from a landline inside the prison. “But after a few calls, ICE blocked my number so Latif could not call me,” she said. “They had refused to say why, but we heard it was an attempt to keep him from getting help. Luckily, I had Latif’s cell phone, so he could call me on that number.” Latif said one day agents took him to JFK Airport. They told him “someone had bought me a ticket to go to Morocco, insinuating it was my wife. I knew they were lying; I told them I didn’t know anyone who would buy me a ticket, and anyway, I had a legal case pending [Sandra had immediately hired an immigration lawyer after his detention]. They threatened me, saying that if I didn’t board the plane they would put me in a real prison for one year. Finally, they took me back to Delaney Hall and put me in solitary confinement for ten days.” After that, they put me on a plane and flew me to Louisiana, to the Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center,” Latif said. “On the plane, our hands and feet were shackled. There was nothing to eat or drink, and it was impossible to use the bathroom. After we landed, they crammed us like sardines into a van with no AC — and this was August in Louisiana. It took over an hour and a half to drive to the facility.” Officials told Latif they were processing him. “I sat there for a week. We didn’t have clean clothes or showers the entire time. And I didn’t have any personal belongings, no money.” As far as Sandra is concerned, Latif’s transfer was “a kidnapping. They don’t tell you ahead of time when they’re about to move you. And they remove the money from your account so you can’t let anyone know.” For over a week, Sandra didn’t know where Latif was. “You couldn’t find him on the ICE locator…even our lawyer couldn’t find him. ICE wouldn’t return her or my calls or emails. You cannot imagine how hysterical I was. I contacted human rights groups, which put us in touch with Congressman Rob Menendez, who got involved in our case.” After his week in Louisiana, agents put Latif on a plane and flew him to Arizona. “By the time we landed that morning, a judge in New York had thrown out the deportation order against me. Meanwhile in Arizona, an ICE agent tried to put me on a charter flight to Morocco.” Latif said his case was pending, and the agent agreed to check. “He found out about the ruling, and said, ‘OK, you’re good.’” Latif managed to call Sandra from Arizona, so she finally knew where he was. “But then they flew him back to Louisiana without telling me,” she said. “Again, I couldn’t find him on the ICE locator, and they wouldn’t even tell our lawyer. We reached out again to Congressman Menendez for help.” After a couple more weeks in Louisiana, “they took me, along with a bunch of other Arabs, to Alexandria International Airport,” Latif said. “They were trying to put me on a flight to Qatar.” Congressman Menendez found out Latif was in Louisiana, and told ICE it had no legal right to hold him. That worked, and he was flown back to Delaney Hall in Newark. Even though a judge had thrown out Latif’s deportation order, they had to get the case transferred from New York to New Jersey, since that was where he was detained. That took several more weeks. Things didn’t get any better for Latif while he waited to get relesed. “When they brought me back from Louisiana to Delaney Hall in New Jersey, I asked a guard for shampoo and soap so I could finally take a shower. He said, ‘We don’t have any.’ I knew that wasn’t true; I argued with him, and he threatened me, and almost started to fight me. I finally forced him to fetch his supervisor, who gave me the soap and shampoo.” Sandra called the office to complain. “The officer lied and said, ‘We give him everything he needs,’ she said. “Then a few days later, I came to visit Latif. I knew that in Louisiana they were torturing him, threatening him, bullying him, denying him food, showers, clothes, mentally screwing with him. But I didn’t know the extent until I visited him for the first time after he returned to Delaney. I was so upset. Latif was a mental disaster. He was so skinny, and totally freaked out. He seemed so nervous, his voice was shaking. He was having a hard time speaking coherently. He looked totally terrified and traumatized. He asked me, ‘Are they going to deport me?’ He was talking like someone with PTSD.” After Sandra visited Latif one Sunday, he called her at home at around nine o’clock that evening to say staff had refused to serve him dinner. “They said, ‘Sorry, the kitchen’s closed,’” Latif recalled. So Sandra called the office again; it was now about ten o’clock at night. “The woman who answered was very nasty: ‘We give them everything, how dare you say we aren’t feeding them?’ My husband is not a liar, I said. I had talked to another guy’s wife who was livid that they hadn’t been fed. The agent says, ‘Let me put you on hold. I waited at least half an hour before she came back, picked up the phone, said, ‘We’re going to feed them now, alright?’ and hung up on me.” Another time Sandra had filed a complaint with DHS about the treatment of the prisoners, “and they blocked me at the gate when I tried to visit Latif.” Latif finally got a hearing, paid a $15,000 bond, and after 108 days in detention, he was released the day before Thanksgiving. The government is still holding his passport. After his release, Latif had to wear an ankle monitor for three months. Now he must check in at an ICE office every month. His green card is in process. Sandra and Latif were previously part of MAGA. They had supported Trump in 2024 {although Latif can’t vote], in large part because he had promised to deport violent criminals. Now they know he was lying. “ICE is acting like gangsters,” Latif said. “The breaking into houses, smashing windows, busting down doors with no warrant, illegal searches and seizures…they’re violating the Constitution all over the place,” said Sandra. “It’s evil; they don’t see immigrants as human beings, they see them as trash to be discarded.” “Since leaving MAGA we now notice the lies, broken promises, and evil agenda,” she said. “Now we’re beginning a journey of educating ourselves to see what else Trump has lied about,” said Latif. Sadly, news coverage of Latif’s saga has sparked “a massive amount of hate mail from the left and the right,” Sandra said. “We were getting flooded with social media messages from people cursing us out. People on the left were saying, ‘I hope you both get deported. You got what you voted for.’ And people on the right were saying, ‘He was illegal, I hope you both get deported.’” [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/5/26/800045574/community/with-migrant-detainees-on-a-hunger-strike-heres-a-look-at-conditions-inside-delaney-hall/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/