Organizers, Activists, and Family Speak Outside Delaney Hall ICE Concentration Camp

Read our article Combat and Resist ICE Terror here, and a statement from a family member of a detainee at Delaney Hall here.

Protesters outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Delaney Hall concentration camp in Newark, New Jersey spoke with The Worker about the detainees on hunger and labor strike inside the facility, their courageous rebellion against their torturous conditions, and the intensifying repression against demonstrators outside.

“This is our seventh day in a row driving up two and a half hours each way because one of our community members kidnapped is inside Unit 2B and he is part of the hunger strike,” an organizer with El Pueblo Unido Atlantic City told The Worker. “He hasn’t eaten in nine days now, so we’re here to stand in solidarity fighting for all those fighting for the justice and dignity that they deserve on the inside, while also making sure we protect the people willing to take a stand and say ‘no más’ [no more] and put everything on the line to try to shut down Delaney Hall. As long as they’re willing to fight on the inside, we’ll be willing to fight on the outside. And that’s why we’ll be here every single day until we have collective liberation.”

About 300 detainees at Delaney Hall initiated a hunger and labor strike on May 22 in response to physical and psychological torture by their captors, including being served rotten food with worms, severe medical neglect, and widespread illness in a poorly ventilated space.

“The food is expired,” a family member of one of the detainees on strike told The Worker. “For example, the small hamburgers that they gave him last week have mold, some kind of green spots. Since my family member was detained here, he got a cold and bronchitis because that facility is full of mold. The air quality is terrible, and we know why. The water is terrible, it’s contaminated, because of all the different factories and waste around here.”

She added, “It’s traumatic, it inflicts a lot of damage on the well-being of the people here. They are being mistreated even worse than in a regular jail. It’s torture. This sounds like something from Hitler’s time, concentration camps.”

Detainees on strike are demanding a meeting with the governor of New Jersey; an immediate release of the medically vulnerable, elderly, pregnant, and young detainees; a thorough review of their cases; and an end to pressuring detainees to sign documents agreeing to deportation.

“We’re not striking for better conditions and treatment, we’re doing this to demand our freedom. We’re going on strike until we are heard,” a statement from the detainees reads.

The detainees, especially those on strike, are increasingly brutalized by the guards.

“Loved ones were getting calls from their people detained inside that ICE had come in and started pepper-spraying entire corridors and hallways and closing the door behind them, and beating them with batons,” an activist who has been regularly protesting outside Delaney Hall told The Worker. “There were reports of several detained people unconscious, and from what we heard, either ambulances were refusing to respond or Delaney Hall was refusing to allow them to come in. Ambulances didn’t show up for over an hour.”

The strike continues in spite of all the repression, inspiring people from all across the country to come show support.

“Some of them have very bad health issues, but they’ve been sticking together more strongly, and more people are joining the strike,” an organizer with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and ICE Out of New Jersey told The Worker. “More people are realizing how the conditions are extremely bad in these jails. They should be closed. We are seeing a system that is killing us and exploiting us and also putting the working class always behind capital.”

Protests in Solidarity with the Detainees’ Strike

Outside Delaney Hall, protesters have been rallying every day and night in support of strikers’ demands since the strike began. At night, government forces—including local police, New Jersey state troopers, and federal agents—intensify their repression of demonstrators.

“About every hour or anytime they need to let some of their [ICE’s] vehicles out, they tend to come out and initiate escalation, with spray, with batons, with pushing, with anything,” one activist who had been on the scene regularly told The Worker.

She described a particularly brutal instance of state violence on May 28: “So, [ICE] came out, and it turned into a scuffle, and they shoved a young activist into an oncoming 18-wheeler. He got his foot and his leg under the wheels…. Ambulances never came.”

She also spoke about ICE targeting medics in particular: “Three or four nights ago, ICE took a medic, they targeted him and took him and they dropped him off hours later. Who knows where? Every night, they shine their lights around, and they take random activists, whether it’s a medic or random people, but they have taken a number of medics. They take them into the detention center, and we don’t hear from them or know where they are released until hours later. It’s similar tactics to the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces].”

One journalist told The Worker that, while he was covering the protests, an ICE agent shot him with a “less-lethal” munition, hitting him “dead in the chest, probably four or five feet away, and cracked my sternum. I ended up having to drive home, and then went to the ER to get it figured out.”

The Two Party Mafias Collude to Repress the Strike and Protesters

On May 29, Democrat Mafia New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill deployed state troopers outside Delaney Hall and set up ironically-named “protected protest zones”, penning protesters away from the detention center while surrounded by armed forces.

Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Markwayne Mullin thanked Governor Sherrill “for cooperating with us to help restore law and order.”

A family member of a detainee told The Worker, “The governor says that she is on our side, but last night, she sent the [state] troopers to attack us. We can run when they go after us, because we are outside, but just imagine when ICE comes to beat [the detainees], what can they do?”

The Newark Police Department is also working closely with federal agents to repress protests, showing the farcical “sanctuary city” legislation to be a convenient label used by the Democrat mafia to conceal their collusion with the Republican mob.

On May 30, counterprotesters including the civilian ultra-reactionary organization Proud Boys held a counter-protest in support of ICE, leaving a few hours later after failing to intimidate protesters.

Around 12:30am on May 31, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka—a “progressive” representative of the Democrat mafia—announced a curfew for a half-mile radius of the detention center indefinitely from 9pm-6am. Around the same time, the Department of Homeland Security claimed to have “secured” the perimeter of Delaney Hall, using military jargon to imply the demonstrators had been cleared from the site by the combined police forces.

According to volunteers with The Worker, demonstrators lit a large fire in the street just outside the ICE torture camp in defiance of the curfew announcement, while police responded with tear gas. Protesters defended themselves, returning teargas canisters, throwing rocks, and using a leaf blower to clear away the chemicals. A car belonging to private prison monopoly GEO Group—which owns Delaney Hall—retreated from the protest after its back window was smashed out.

The government has since used the curfew as a pretext to move the “protected protest zone” away from Delaney Hall. Police forces attacked the demonstration and engaged in mass arrests Sunday night/Monday morning, activists on the ground told The Worker.

“So, you know, when people were marching in the streets and you had people saying, do not confront the police, do not antagonize the police. You know, be civil, be peaceful,” a protester told The Worker, “You know, it is a sight to see when hours later, you see police coming out in riot gear and doing exactly the opposite of what those people said we were supposed to be doing.”

In a press conference on May 31, Governor Sherrill used the usual Democrat mafia counter-insurgency ploy of veiled threats against the people, arguing that to combat and resist will incite more repression and to instead accept the peace of concentration camps and state terror: “Violent, chaotic clashes hurt everyone. They put the lives of both protesters and law enforcement in danger. They take the focus away from people inside Delaney Hall and their families. And they raise the temperature with ICE. I will ensure public safety and I refuse to give ICE an excuse to surge into our communities.”

An organizer with El Pueblo Unido Atlantic City told The Worker, “It’s very clear that Governor Sherrill is complicit in ICE’s kidnapping of our community members, that this whole system—whether it’s GEO Group, ICE, the governor of New Jersey, the state troopers—they’re all complicit. One of our mottos is ‘only the people will save the people’, and that’s what we need right now: more and more eyes on ICE, and people here willing to either engage in direct action or support families outside.”

When asked what people can do to support the struggle, a family member of a detainee told The Worker, “Support the strike, support the families here, support the organizations that are here supporting the families.”

Her message to ICE detainees rebelling against their abduction across the country: “Keep fighting; as long as they resist, we are going to continue supporting them.”

Photo: Protesters in support of ICE detainees on strike clash with police forces outside Delaney Hall. Credit: Fizzyfoxphotographer on Instagram.

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