As anti-ICE protests escalated outside the Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark, New Jersey, last month, a 33-year-old Colombian woman inside the facility was becoming “severely and violently ill,” her attorney wrote in federal court filings.

Laura Yinneth Molano Luque made multiple requests for medical help over several days, but her pleas went unheeded — until she fainted and was transferred to the hospital, her attorney Franklin S. Montero wrote. She was returned to Delaney Hall the next day, and fainted again.

Since then, according to the filings, Molano Luque has vomited blood, experienced severe and unrelenting pain, and has at times been unable to speak. Even still, Montero wrote, she has received no medical assistance beyond antibiotics, and has largely been unable to eat.

“This is not an administrative oversight,” Montero, who is based in Clifton, New Jersey, wrote in the June 4 emergency letter to a federal judge seeking her release. “It is the textbook definition of deliberate indifference to serious medical needs."

A review of court filings by Gothamist found that Molano Luque is among over 70 detainees who have filed federal lawsuits alleging medical neglect and deficiencies at Delaney Hall. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility and its medical unit are run by the GEO Group, a private prison contractor that also operates more than 50 detention sites across the country.

The concerns about medical care at Delaney Hall emerged in court filings as early as May of last year, when the facility reopened, and long before detainees this spring mounted a hunger and labor strike, first reported by Gothamist, over the conditions inside. And complaints have mounted in recent months.

Last month, detainees filed at least 18 lawsuits in federal court alleging medical neglect and deficiencies at the facility, more than in any prior month. Meanwhile, the facility’s population has remained fairly steady at just under 1,000 people each day.

The court records allege a litany of shortcomings at the facility, including not providing prescribed medication and treatment for over 30 detainees with chronic conditions such as asthma, epilepsy, diabetes and cancer. In several cases, the court filings allege that facility staff failed to respond to requests for medical help, or responded only after conditions worsened and forced hospital visits.

The number of complaints of medical neglect in the filings “dramatically understates what’s actually happening at Delaney Hall,” according to Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants' Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School.

Mukherjee said the medical complaints about the facility raised in federal court are the “tip of the iceberg,” given that only a small fraction of detainees end up filing lawsuits contesting their detention, and an even smaller fraction raise their medical concerns in court filings.

A spokesperson for the GEO Group referred questions to ICE. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, referred Gothamist to an earlier press release denying allegations of poor conditions at the facility.

DHS has repeatedly maintained that the detainees receive “comprehensive” medical care upon entering ICE custody, including dental care, mental health services, and round-the-clock emergency care. In the earlier release, acting Assistant DHS Secretary Lauren Bis said, “For many illegal aliens, this is the best healthcare they have received their entire lives.”

Judges intervene

Federal District Court judges ultimately ordered the release or bond hearings for the majority of the over 70 ICE detainees who in court filings alleged medical neglect and deficiencies at Delaney Hall, finding they were arrested unlawfully or without due process to contest their detention.

But in 11 cases, federal judges found the concerns over medical care were severe enough to warrant the detainee’s release or other relief at least in part due specifically to medical concerns. In two other cases, ICE released detainees after judges ruled that the federal government had to either release the individuals or provide more details about their medical care.

In one instance, a 50-year-old Hungarian man ruptured his Achilles tendon while at Delaney Hall, and was forced to undergo a surgery that could have been avoided if he had received proper medical care, his attorneys claimed in a lawsuit filed earlier this month. Gothamist has opted not to publish his name because his attorneys were unable to contact him.

ICE provides no press access to detainees and has even restricted access by elected officials wishing to speak with detainees.

In another case, a 67-year-old Chinese man named Sen Miao Lin repeatedly asked for but never received medication for his Type 2 diabetes and hypertension for nearly a month — and at one point in that time, he collapsed, lost consciousness, and was rushed to the emergency room, his attorney alleged in a lawsuit from May of last year. Lin’s attorney raised no concerns about his client being identified in the story.

Maria, a 38-year-old thyroid cancer survivor from Brazil, alleged medical staff didn’t provide her prescribed daily hormone supplements during her roughly two-week-long stay, and also provided the incorrect medication, leaving her unable to urinate for at least four days, her attorney wrote in an emergency March 31 letter to a federal judge. The next day, the judge ordered her release, in part due to the possibility of “irreparable harm,” including organ failure or sepsis.

Maria’s attorney asked that Gothamist not publish her full name due to concern that she might face retaliation and jeopardize her pending immigration case.

The complaints over medical care persist even as the Trump administration has threatened to ramp up immigration enforcement in the New York City area and across the country. That could put more pressure on detention facilities like Delaney Hall, which has housed more than 10,000 immigrants since its reopening. The majority of detainees have no criminal history.

Concerned raised elsewhere

The medical concerns raised about Delaney Hall mirror similar allegations at ICE detention centers across the country, as deaths of immigrants in ICE custody are at the highest level in over two decades.

A recent analysis by the Associated Press and KFF Health News found hundreds of allegations of medical neglect at ICE facilities, as detailed in federal lawsuits across the U.S. Those lawsuits included allegations of denied medications, festering infections, rising blood sugars, untreated cancers and requests for medical help that went unanswered.

A recent report by The City Reporter found 60 federal court filings alleging medical neglect at Delaney Hall.

Under ICE's internal detention standards, medical staff are supposed to provide "timely responses to medical complaints," including that all requests for health care services be "triaged" within 24 hours of receipt. All detainees are also supposed to undergo an initial medical, mental health, and dental screening within 12 hours of arrival, and receive free "medically necessary and appropriate" healthcare, including specialty care. And an internal ICE audit of Delaney Hall in August of last year identified no deficiencies in medical care.

But in some federal lawsuits, outside doctors weighed in on the detainees’ medical care in detention, saying it was insufficient.

Among those cases was Haruna, a 39-year-old Ghanaian man with hepatitis B who was taken to the hospital twice, last year and in March, and had to receive a blood transfusion and surgery after his requests for help were answered late or not at all, according to court filings in a federal lawsuit filed on his behalf. His attorneys asked that Gothamist not publish his full name out of concern that his client’s pending immigration case could be jeopardized.

Anjali Niyogi, a doctor who teaches internal medicine and pediatrics at Tulane University and reviewed his medical records upon the request of his attorney, said in a sworn court declaration that Delaney Hall staff “failed to provide him with the needed outpatient medical care to treat his conditions,” including failing to transporting him to a gastroenterology appointment before he was rushed to an emergency room.

Niyogi found, as the man’s attorney Lauren Major put in a letter to the judge, "a cycle of insufficient ongoing care at Delaney Hall, which leads to decomposition in his health, and then after he deteriorates to a state where his life is in danger, emergency treatment.”

'It's a systemic issue'

Rep. Rob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat whose district includes part of Newark, has visited Delaney Hall several times and said he has spoken with dozens of detainees along with GEO Group staff and regional ICE leaders. During the visits, Menendez said, he has consistently heard two divergent narratives: GEO Group and ICE staff claim detainees are receiving adequate medical care, and the detainees themselves claim the opposite.

“When everyone’s telling you that they’re not consistently getting the medication that they need, to me it’s not just a one-off thing,” Menendez said. “It’s a systemic issue that the facility is facing and they’re not correctly addressing.”

Menendez also said the amount of medical staff at Delaney Hall is insufficient to deal with the multitude of detainees with severe medical issues, which national immigration advocates and civil rights lawyers say is a consistent theme in ICE detention centers across the country.

Delaney Hall has one on-site doctor who is at the facility five days a week, another off-site contracted doctor who is supposed to be on call at all times, and roughly a half-dozen other medical staff for the 1,000-bed facility, according to Menendez. He said GEO Group staff told him the company plans to hire another doctor for the facility. A spokesperson for the private prison contractor declined to confirm staffing details.

While several detainees have successfully contested their medical care in court, immigration advocates and elected officials say attempts at broader reforms at the facility have been stalled because of the GEO Group’s profit incentives and a lack of oversight from the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans. The GEO Group was awarded a $1.2 billion contract to operate the facility for 15 years, according to the federal government’s contracting database.

Menendez added: “This is a for-profit enterprise. Their primary concern is the way they ration.”

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has gutted divisions of DHS tasked with oversight, inspection, and civil rights investigations within ICE, prompting concerns from immigration advocates about a lack of repercussions for ICE detention centers that fail to meet standards.

Menendez and other members of New Jersey's congressional delegation recently requested more information about Delaney Hall detainees’ medical treatment from DHS leaders, including records regarding medical requests and hospitalizations and answers to questions about emergency medical care and access to prescriptions. But so far those requests have gone unanswered, according to Menendez’s office.

Gov. Mikie Sherrill and other New Jersey Democrats have called for the facility to be shut down and filed lawsuits seeking entry for fire and health inspectors.

“We are going to keep working for better conditions inside Delaney Hall until it is closed for good,” Sherill said in a recent statement announcing the lawsuit.

'Everyone tells me I have to wait'

But Delaney Hall will likely take on even greater prominence in the months ahead, as the agency loses over 200 nearby detention beds under a new New York state law that prohibits local jails from contracting with ICE.

For now, Molano Luque remains detained at Delaney Hall. Her husband Fernando Pineda, also from Colombia, said she has been transported to the hospital several times while in detention, but sometimes she didn’t stay there long enough to receive proper care, at times only remaining for a couple hours before returning to Delaney Hall.

Some days she doesn’t receive her antibiotics, and she still isn’t receiving her prescribed meal plan, said Pineda, adding that he’s reached out to several elected officials and spent his savings on lawyers to help.

“I’m desperate because I feel so much uncertainty,” Pineda said in Spanish. “I don’t know what else to do for her.”

“Everyone tells me I have to wait," he added. "But I ask myself: Wait for what? Wait for my wife to die?”