Lourdes Rosero was working at a warehouse in Avenel, New Jersey, on October 29, 2025, when immigration agents showed up and detained her. Within days, the Ecuadorian immigrant who had lived in Elizabeth since 2021 found herself locked up far from home at a detention center in rural Louisiana, separated from her partner Diana and facing a legal fight that would eventually cost more than $25,000.
Rosero's case, first detailed by New Jersey Monitor, traces a path that has become increasingly common for immigrants swept up in New Jersey enforcement actions: arrest at a workplace, a stint at a local detention facility, then transfer to a distant out-of-state processing center before family or bail money can bring them home. Rosero had no prior criminal charges or conviction, according to the outlet's reporting. She spent eight days at the Elizabeth Detention Center, a facility operated by CoreCivic, before being transferred to the LaSalle ICE Processing Center in Jena, Louisiana, a 1,160-bed facility run by The GEO Group that has housed federal detainees since 2007, according to Wikipedia. The Elizabeth Detention Center is a New Jersey immigration detention facility where hundreds of asylum seekers are held.
While detained in Louisiana, an ICE agent offered Rosero voluntary self-deportation along with $1,000, the New Jersey Monitor's reporting states. But Diana urged her to fight the case instead, and Rosero chose to pursue her claim through the judicial system rather than accept the offer. An immigration judge set bail, and Diana helped secure Rosero's release, allowing her to return to New Jersey.
A System Stacked Against Detainees
Immigrants detained by ICE lack a government-provided right to counsel, according to the same reporting, which is why Rosero's legal battle has already run past $25,000. She has since obtained an employment authorization document and filed an asylum application, and appeared virtually for the first hearing in her case. An immigration judge set an August deadline for her to submit asylum evidence, and she expects her next court date later this month. Rosero is waiting as her case proceeds.
Rosero described her ordeal in stark terms to the outlet, saying her sense of freedom is gone. She is attending therapy for nightmares and trauma stemming from her detention. Newark, where one of New Jersey's two immigration courts sits, has seen judges move through dockets so fast that one immigration court judge saw more than 20 cases in a single hour, per the New Jersey Monitor's account.
Delaney Hall's Billion-Dollar Expansion
The GEO Group expected to reactivate the roughly 1,000-bed Delaney Hall immigrant jail in Newark in the second quarter of 2025 after ICE awarded the company a 15-year, $1 billion contract worth roughly $60 million annually, according to The GEO Group. The facility, previously a correctional halfway house, is now an immigration detention center.
That expansion has proceeded despite a 2023 New Jersey law that restricted contracts to house immigrant detainees in the state. A federal judge struck down the private-entities provision of that law as unconstitutional, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed the lower court's decision in 2025, according to Justia Law. The ruling cleared the way for CoreCivic and GEO Group contracts to continue at facilities like Elizabeth Detention Center and Delaney Hall.
State Officials Keep Fighting Back
Blocked from banning private detention contracts outright, New Jersey officials have pivoted to other legal strategies. Governor Mikie Sherrill, Attorney General Jen Davenport, and Roxbury Township's GOP leadership sued to block a planned $129 million mass processing center in Roxbury capable of holding nearly 1,500 people, a fight that ended when the Trump administration said in June 2026 it was abandoning the plan and formally reversed it in July. Davenport separately opened a civil rights investigation into Delaney Hall in August 2026 after GEO Group repeatedly denied state Department of Health personnel full access to inspect medical units following detainee deaths, according to the New Jersey Department of Health.
Earlier this month, a federal judge dismissed a Department of Justice lawsuit challenging Executive Order 12, Sherrill's directive barring federal immigration officers from using nonpublic state property without a judicial warrant, allowing the restriction to stand, per The Jersey Vindicator. Newark has pursued its own municipal route, suing GEO Group in Essex County Superior Court in April 2025 for opening Delaney Hall without required building permits or safety inspections, a case a federal magistrate judge sent to mediation in May 2026.
Raids Across the State
Rosero's arrest is one thread in a wider enforcement surge that has touched workplaces across New Jersey. Immigration agents arrested 2,080 people statewide in July 2026 alone, per the New Jersey Monitor's reporting, and the state ranked eighth nationally for immigration arrests. Separate raids detained roughly 50 workers at the Savino Del Bene warehouse in Avenel. Separate raids have also been reported elsewhere in New Jersey. Hoodline previously reported on an ICE raid at Lakewood's El Oaxaqueño.
Nationally, ICE arrests jumped from roughly 300 per day before January 2025 to more than 1,500 per day by July 2026, according to the Deportation Data Project, while voluntary departures increased 28-fold in 2025 compared with the prior year. Immigrant rights advocate Amy Torres has reported that ICE is detaining people with valid work visas, student visas, and green cards, and has described the Trump administration's immigration enforcement as chaos. Torres also noted that immigration detainees must find their own legal representation, since none is provided by the government. Between May and October 2025, 34% of ICE arrests in New Jersey involved people with pending criminal charges, according to the Prison Policy Initiative. Hoodline also reported on ICE custody nationwide.
Rep. Rob Menendez, who has visited Delaney Hall dozens of times, said he believes injustices in immigration detention centers will eventually end. ICE officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Rosero's case, according to the New Jersey Monitor. For now, Rosero waits for her next court date, still without the work permit she needs to fully rebuild the life she had before the warehouse raid in Avenel.
