Protests outside Delaney Hall, Newark’s controversial ICE detention center, have continued into a second week with dozens of arrests overnight after demonstrators defied a curfew imposed by the city’s mayor.
As theGrio has previously reported, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was himself arrested at Delaney Hall last year while protesting the facility’s opening, and theGrio has also covered Baraka’s subsequent lawsuit against federal prosecutors over his arrest. According to The Guardian, New Jersey’s Democratic attorney general, Jennifer Davenport, said those arrested overnight had “come to the protest armed with helmets, shields, or gas masks, deliberately refused to comply with repeated orders to leave the area.” Advocacy groups including the Immigration Coalition reported over 46 Delaney Hall protesters arrested by Sunday night.
Baraka imposed a 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew around the facility “due to the escalating situation at Delaney Hall and the increasing need for police intervention,” citing multiple arrests on Saturday night involving individuals in possession of weapons. CBS News reported that state officers in riot gear, and others on horseback, rushed the crowd less than 15 minutes after issuing a dispersal order.
The protests stem from conditions inside the facility, which detainees say include inadequate food, denial of medical care, and suspended family visitation rights. Detainees have been engaged in hunger and labor strikes in response. The facility, operated by the GEO Group under a 15-year, $1 billion ICE contract, holds an average daily population of between 800 and 900 people.
Democratic politicians who conducted a congressional oversight visit Sunday pushed back hard on the Trump administration’s account of conditions inside. “The lack of access to quality food, that’s not America. The lack of access to adequate medical treatment, that’s not America,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters. He called for the facility to be shut down entirely.
The Department of Homeland Security disputed those characterizations, saying detainees “receive full due process and are provided comprehensive medical care and 3 meals a day,” and called allegations of mistreatment “a hoax.” A DHS social media post on Sunday showed an apparently unarmed protester being dragged at gunpoint behind a line of officers, with the caption: “Don’t be this guy.”
New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill, who took over policing duties outside the facility from federal ICE officers on Friday to reduce tensions, said Sunday that family visitation had been partially restored and would resume fully on Monday. “I refuse to let these dangerous actions detract from New Jersey’s dedication to ensuring public safety, keeping people safe from ICE, and that the people detained inside Delaney Hall are treated with dignity,” Sherrill said.
