Border Czar Tom Homan responded to a reported hunger strike by illegal immigrants at Delaney Hall, a private ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey, over alleged poor conditions inside the facility, including spoiled or expired food, inadequate medical care, overcrowding, and retaliation against the strikers. The strike has reportedly been ongoing since Saturday, May 23, and involves roughly 300 detainees demanding better treatment, faster hearings, or release.
Rather than caving to their demands, Homan stated bluntly that hunger strikes rarely work. He added that if physicians at the facility determine the detainees are putting themselves in serious danger, Immigration and Customs Enforcement would seek a court order that allows authorities to force-feed them.
Border Czar Tom Homan just DARES detainees at the ICE facility in New Jersey to continue their hunger strike — and warns that ICE will force feed them if necessary.
— Overton (@overton_news) May 26, 2026
Homan said he’s been in this role since the 1980s and hunger strikes NEVER work.
HOMAN: “Look, I’ve done this… pic.twitter.com/4O8ptxNYad
"Look, I've done this since 1984. Hunger strikes never work," Homan. "We're not going to change what we do because someone goes on a hunger strike. As a matter of fact, if it gets bad enough and the physicians feel like they're putting themselves in extreme danger, medical danger, then we'll force-feed them. We'll get a court order and force-feed them."
"Hunger strikes do not work. So they can put themselves in a position where they're not eating, but it's not going to cause them to be released," he said. "We are going to continue to arrest people. We'll continue to detain people. As far as complaining about ICE contract facilities, well, guess what? We're building our own warehouse facilities. We will have the federally-owned detention facilities by the thousands of beds. So look for the future."
"And I've said from day one, we need to own more of these facilities when we operate them on federal land," he added. "And that way, we're not dealing with all this crap from the local politicians and the state and the governors because this is a federal facility on federal land. That's the direction we need to go to. And that's the direction we're heading in."
