6 events in Passaic County with a date

New book details detention center

Contains writing from activists, educators

By: Ricardo Kaulessar
NorthJersey.com
USA Today Network - New Jersey

..... The Trump administration has been making a push to buy local warehouses across the country for use as immigration detention sites, including one recently in Roxbury [NJ] that has been the subject of protests.
..... Three decades earlier, in 1994, that was the fate of an industrial warehouse on the outskirts of Elizabeth. [NJ] It was turned into the Elizabeth Detention Center.
..... The facility is the subject of a new book, "Elizabeth Detention Center" A Social History of Immigration Detention in New Jersey and the United States," which will be published by Rutgers University Press on July 15 [2026] ($29.95 paperback, preorder on April 15). [2026]
..... While much of the attention around detention in New Jersey has been on Delaney Hall, the facility in Newark [NJ] that's been in the spotlight since it reopened for business in May [2025] the Elizabeth Detention Center continues to operate despite opposition over its existence.
..... In recent times, the facility, which hold up to 300 people and is operated by the prison company CoreCivic in contract with the federal government, has been close to closing due to the state law that prohibits local jails form entering into new contracts to house federal immigration detainees.
..... But a federal appeals court ruled last year [2025] that the ban on private immigration detention contracts is unconstitutional.
..... The opposition is covered along with various other topics in the 204-page book, edited by Ulla Berg, an associate professor of anthropology and Latino and Caribbean studies at Rutgers University, and Carolina Sanchez Boe, an adjunct lecturer at the Paris Campus of Brown University. the book is a compilation of wrings from activists, pastors, lawyers, educators , and several former detainees.
..... Kathy O'Leary, regional coordinator for Pax Christi New Jersey, a chapter of the international Catholic peace organization, has protested the Elizabeth Detention Center for years, calling for its closing.
..... She was also a contributor to the book writing a chapter, "Know Where You Stand and Stand There," about members of the faith community standing outside the facility to protest inhumane condition, such as the facility having no windows and limited visiting hours for family members, and deaths of detainees like Boubacar Bah in 2007 and Victor Antonio Ramirez-Reyes in 2011.
..... O'Leary said she is glad hat the book is being published to show young people that protesting a facility like the EDC can bring like-minded people to stand together for a common cause, even when, she said, the times are as dire as in the present time.
..... "To be able to show them that, yeah, it's really bad. But there are other times where we thought it was really bad and that we made a difference," O'Leary said.
..... "Sometimes, when things are at their worst, is when we can do the most community building."

History of EDC

..... The book opens with an introduction by the book's editors, Ulla Berge and Carolina Sanchez Boe, about the early years of the EDC, when the converted warehouse became a site for the federal government to detain immigrants, and describes an uprising by detainees in 1995 that led to a brief closure.
..... In the following chapter, over 20 authors chronicle various aspects of the facility, located on Evans Street, a six-minute drive from Newark Airport. It's location makes it convenient for federal immigrant officers to bring in asylum seekers and migrants off planes or transport them out of the country.
..... Former Record and NorthJersey.com reporter Liz Llorente, who covered immigration for over 15 years, wrote a chapter looking at asylum seekers who were held for months at the facility.
..... New York-based Nigerian LGBTQ activist Edafe Okporo, wrote a chapter revisiting his five months in detention after fleeing his home country in 2016, where he was housed with over 40 other detainees.
..... Berg, who also co-wrote several chapters with other detainees, has visited the EDC several times. She said the book come out of those visits as she became interested in the subject of immigration detention.
..... She hopes the book will get readers to focus on immigration detention and particularly on a place that she wants to see closed down immediately.
..... "I hope that the book will continue to bring attention to just how unnecessary it is to lock people up in prisons for immigration-related matters that are civic matters. People live best in communities, and that's where they should belong and where they should be, and they should not be locked up with great consequences also for there families and loved ones," Berg said. "I also hope that for EDC in particular, the book will help in the ongoing campaign to shut down the facility."

..... Ricardo Kaulessar covers race, immigration, and culture for NorthJersey.com . for unlimited access to the most important news form your local community, please subscripted or activate your digital account today.

HOME