Editor’s note: This story was edited on June 8 to clarify that the 18-year-old who was released said she won’t be able to graduate this year after missing 2 months of school. After being in isolation for nearly 5 months – since he was detained by ICE on Dec. 22, 2025 – Emanuel Rodrigues, a Brazilian immigrant who has a rare, life-threatening condition that affects his mobility, was released from Delaney Hall on Thursday afternoon.His wife, Anna Lucas, called me about an hour ago, in tears. “Daysi,” she said. “It’s happening, it’s really happening, they’re letting Emanuel go.”Shortly after, we met at the detention center and she handed me the wheelchair she’d brought for him.“Please go inside and get him,” she said. “I’m too afraid to step foot in there.”Because of his condition, rhabdomyolysis – a disorder that happens when muscle fibers break down and leak their toxic contents into the bloodstream – Emanuel is not able to walk. While in detention, Emanuel says he fell after a guard prohibited his use of his crutches. He’s among the many detainees who have spoken out publicly, some of them signing a letter released to the media and advocacy groups, about the inhumane conditions inside the controversial detention center. They say their food is spoiled and contaminated with worms. They’re denied medical treatment. And in some cases, like Emanuel’s case, kept in isolation. While legislators visited the detention center a few weeks ago to conduct an oversight inspection, Emanuel wasn’t permitted to speak to the congressmen, which included U.S. Rep. Rob Menendez, he said. After I spoke with Emanuel and Anna and wrote about his situation, Emanuel says Menendez was made aware of his case and went back specifically to visit him. “After meeting with Emanuel multiple times, confronting ICE on his situation and helping bring his story to the public, he was finally freed from Delaney,” Menendez said today in a statement. “Thank you to everyone who continues to demand freedom for those inside Delaney Hall and to those like Daysi Calavia-Robertson who have shined a light onto stories like Emanuel’s. We won’t stop until every individual is released and this facility is shut down.” Soon after the congressman’s visit to Emanuel just weeks ago, a hunger and labor strike among the detainees started — on Memorial Day — and since then, protesters have rallied day and night outside Delaney Hall, often in violent clashes with law enforcement. Since then, a few detainees have been released, including an 18-year-old girl who lives in Orange and won’t be able to graduate high school this year after missing two months of her senior year. An ICE spokesperson previously told me that Emanuel was “NOT in isolation” but rather in “medical observation” to “ensure his health and safety.”The spokesperson said “all aliens in ICE custody are provided comprehensive medical care” and have access to “medical appointments and 24-hour emergency care.”“What they say, hermana, it’s not true, you have to believe me,“ Emanuel told me a few weeks ago, pleadingly.And, of course, I did. I still do. I believe all of them, and so do the Democratic lawmakers who have also been inside Delaney Hall to speak to detainees first-hand. The first thing Emanuel said to me as I walked over to him inside the detention center’s parking lot? “God is good.” He was wearing the same white rosary around his neck as the day I visited him at Delaney Hall weeks ago and held a black Bible tightly on his lap.“God is good, God is good,” he said, as we embraced tears rolling down both of our faces.When I wheeled him out, he held that same Bible in the air and told a small crowd of activists, volunteers, and journalists, it was God who had freed him.“ICE didn’t want people to know that there was a sick person like me inside here, that they were keeping me like this inside there …it was not something they wanted people to see because it gives them a bad image, but God listened to my prayers,” he told them.Anna Lucas drops to her knees as her husband, Emanuel Rodrigues is released after five months at Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey on Thursday, June 4, 2026.Gavin Schweiger | NJ.comUpon seeing her husband, Anna dropped to her knees, unable to contain her emotions. “Oh, I prayed so much for this day,” she said, raising her hands up to the heavens in prayer.Kathy O’Leary, of immigrants’ rights coalition Eyes on ICE, joyfully rang the bell she’s been ringing every time a person is released from Delaney Hall.“Now, it’s time they release everyone else,” she said. “Yes, yes, please God,” Emanuel replied. Two faith leaders who were on site put their hands on Emanuel’s shoulders and prayed over him in Spanish. Along with his Bible and his crutches, Emanuel had a sheet of paper with a pencil drawing he’d made while in isolation. “It’s the bottom of a well,” he told the faith leaders. “That’s how I felt being inside there, like I was at the bottom of a deep well and now here I am ...I just, I, I almost can’t believe it.”