It Was Never About Immigration
Iemad Saifo, 65, walked into a routine immigration check-in in Mount Laurel, New Jersey on July 31 with his lawyer and two of his children. He left in ICE custody. He is now locked inside Delaney Hall, the GEO Group-run detention facility in Newark.
Saifo arrived from Syria in 2002 on a B1/B2 visa. He has spent nearly a quarter-century building a life in South Jersey. In 2011 he opened Zena’s American Mediterranean Cuisine & Catering in Collingswood, naming the restaurant after his daughter. His wife and four children (Zena, Tarek, Omar, and 11-year-old Aboudie) are U.S. citizens. He has worked with multiple attorneys for years seeking permanent residency and citizenship. He has available legal pathways. He showed up when told to show up.
Family of Collingswood Restaurant Owner Detained by ICE Calls for His Release - NJ PEN
Omar, Tarek, and Zena Saifo outside the restaurant their father founded.
That compliance is exactly what got him taken. The system does not reward people who follow the rules. It uses the rules as a trap. Check-ins are not administrative formalities. They are collection points. The people most likely to appear are the ones who believe the process still means something.
Saifo is 65. He has chronic health conditions that affect his ability to speak and communicate. His youngest son is autistic and relies on him as primary caregiver. Removing him from the home is not an incidental consequence. It is the point.
Owner of Collingswood restaurant being held at Delaney Hall | PHL17.com
Zena’s American Mediterranean Cuisine in Collingswood.
Delaney Hall is not a neutral holding facility. It is a private prison operated by GEO Group under a 15-year, roughly $1 billion contract with ICE. Capacity sits near 1,200. The building sits in an industrial zone next to a sewage plant and a fat-rendering facility. Detainees and advocates have documented spoiled food, filthy conditions, inadequate medical care, and extreme heat. In late May, hundreds of people inside launched a hunger strike. Protests outside the walls turned into clashes with federal agents. On or around August 1–2, a Salvadoran man named Edwin Lopez-Cornejo died after a medical emergency while in custody there. New Jersey’s attorney general has since opened a civil rights investigation into GEO’s treatment of people held at the facility.
New migrant jail in Newark begins housing detainees despite legal challenge • New Jersey Monitor
Delaney Hall exterior, Newark.
Saifo’s family and neighbors have responded the only way available under these conditions: public pressure. They have circulated petitions, written letters to the Department of Homeland Security, and raised money for legal costs. CAIR-NJ has demanded his immediate release on bond so he can prepare for his December immigration court date instead of sitting in a facility where people are dying. Community members gathered to write support letters this past weekend.
The official story is always the same: this is about enforcing immigration law. The material reality is different. A 65-year-old restaurant owner who entered lawfully, built a business, raised a family of citizens, and kept every appointment is now in a privately run detention center that generates revenue for GEO Group. His autistic child has lost his primary caregiver. His wife and adult children are left to manage the restaurant and the legal fight alone.
This is not border security. It is not public safety. It is the deliberate destruction of a family that did everything the system claimed to require. The machinery does not distinguish between “good” and “bad” immigrants once the political demand for numbers and the private contractor’s demand for beds are in play. Compliance becomes liability. Presence becomes the offense.
Saifo should be home. He should be cooking, caring for his son, and preparing for his court date. Instead he is inside a facility with a documented pattern of medical neglect and a recent death. The community that knows him is organizing because the process that was supposed to protect people who follow the rules has instead delivered them to the private prison industry.
Release him.
