December 24, 2025

Media Contacts:
Communications HBA, media@haitianbridge.org

San Diego, CA. — The Haitian Bridge Alliance (HBA) stands in solidarity with the family, loved ones, and community of Jean Wilson Brutus, a 41-year-old Haitian man who died on December 12, 2025, just one day after entering U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody at Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey. According to family members, Brutus was healthy upon intake and had no known serious medical conditions prior to his detention — yet he did not leave alive.

This horrific death is not an aberration; it is yet another tragic reminder of the state-sanctioned violence inflicted upon immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers by the cruel immigration enforcement system. Far too many immigrants have died while in ICE custody. We thank Congresswoman LaMonica Mclver (NJ-10) and Reps Yvette Clarks (NY-090 and Rob Menendez (NJ-08) for conducting an oversight visit at Delaney Hall. 

Haitian Bridge Alliance demands:

• A fully independent, impartial investigation into the circumstances of Jean Wilson Brutus’s death and all practices at Delaney Hall.
• Immediate accountability for ICE, GEO Group, and any agents or contractors whose negligence or indifference may have contributed to this tragedy.
• An end to the detention of asylum seekers and the abolition of punitive immigration enforcement structures that disproportionately harm Black migrants.
• Legislative action to ensure humane treatment, oversight, and protections for all people seeking refuge in the United States.

Statement from Guerline Jozef, Executive Director of Haitian Bridge Alliance:

“What happened to Mr. Jean Wilson Brutus is not just a medical failure — it is the predictable outcome of a carceral immigration system designed to warehouse Black and Brown bodies out of sight. Detention is not about safety; it is about control, profit, and racialized exclusion. When the state cages people for seeking protection, death becomes policy. We owe Jean’s family more than condolences — we owe them the truth, justice, and the dismantling of a system that keeps killing  people.”
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ABOUT HAITIAN BRIDGE ALLIANCE

Haitian Bridge Alliance (HBA), also known as “The Bridge”, is a grassroots community organization that advocates for fair and humane immigration policies, foreign policy, and provides migrants and immigrants with humanitarian, legal, and social services, with a particular focus on Black migrants, the Haitian community, women and girls, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and survivors of torture and other human rights abuses. HBA also seeks to elevate the issues unique to Black migrants and build solidarity and a collective movement toward policy change. Anpil men chay pa lou (“Many hands make the load light”).
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