Delaney Hall protests explode as state police clear streets

Masked protesters and ICE officers faced off outside Delaney Hall in Newark as New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill tried to contain the demonstrations with a “protected speech zone.” After a hunger and labor strike by detainees began on May 22 and visiting hours we

For hours. masked protesters and masked ICE agents stood facing each other across a thin strip of asphalt outside Newark’s Delaney Hall. Along the edges of the crowd, New Jersey state troopers lingered with arms crossed, looking bored. During daylight. the scene felt almost manageable—thinner crowds. more relaxed officers behind the gates. and visiting routines that had once allowed families to go in and out.

Then the sun went down.

A street medic called Egg watched the night approach and said the next phase would arrive fast. “When sunset happens, they’re going to push us into that cage and mace the fuck out of us,” Egg said. “When they come, they’ll come hard and fast.”

The “cage” Egg meant was not a facility enclosure inside Delaney Hall. It was a small square of orange fencing set up on the street outside. part of a push by New Jersey’s new Democratic governor. Mikie Sherrill. to curb the protests by creating a designated “protected speech zone.” Temporary fencing. protesters argued. wasn’t enough—especially not for the people inside Delaney Hall. where detainees said conditions were intolerable.

On May 22. detainees in DHS custody began a hunger and labor strike over what they said were inhumane conditions inside the facility. In letters describing their situation. detainees listed a persistent spread of disease. long response times by guards in the case of accident and injury. worm-riddled food. insufficient medical care. and dilapidated bathrooms that they said were in “inhumane condition.”.

In one letter, detainees wrote: “We’d like to apologize for the way we entered the United States.” They added, “Our American dream is safety and protection — with our families.” The letter continued: “Although this is a difficult situation, we trust in God and believe in American justice.”

They said American justice had not delivered what they were promised. The detainees claimed that after surrendering to U.S. authorities, they had been held for months—even after they sought to voluntarily return to their country of origin. One letter included hundreds of signatures from detainees desperate to leave Delaney Hall. offering to go by any means just to escape the conditions inside.

Outside the facility, families had organized support tents and resource centers to help visitors meet their loved ones during visiting hours. But as DHS continued to ignore detainees’ demands for more humane treatment and protests grew louder, pressure mounted for a full inspection of the facility.

The political response came with restrictions. On Monday, Sherrill and other New Jersey politicians attempted to visit Delaney Hall. They were allowed inside, but denied full access. Afterward. Sherrill said in a statement: “My request for access to Delaney Hall was formally denied this morning. raising serious questions about what they are trying to hide from public view.” She added. “I will continue to hold ICE accountable. … In New Jersey, we believe in the rule of law and that everyone deserves to be treated with basic dignity.”.

Outside Delaney Hall, the demonstrations escalated into violence. ICE agents flooded waves of protesters—including New Jersey Senator Andy Kim—with pepper spray. Protesters said agents smashed their bodies into the ground and, in one case, into oncoming traffic. ICE used pepper balls and tear gas. Visiting hours were canceled.

Then Sherrill sent in the state police. On Friday night, she dispatched state police not to open or inspect the facility, but to clear the streets of protesters.

I arrived around 6:30 on Friday evening as Jersey state troopers had closed the road more than half a mile from Delaney Hall in either direction. slowing the near-constant flow of semi-trucks. Delaney Hall sits in a desolate industrial stretch of Newark—on a straight road passing the county jail. shipping companies. an asphalt plant. and fuel depots. When the wind picked up from the south, the smell of the sewage treatment plant carried over.

Near the facility, activists had set up tents and port-a-potties. Boxes filled with protective equipment—respirators. goggles. masks. knee and elbow pads—lined up for anyone preparing for what they expected to come. In front of Delaney Hall, a loose crowd of protesters stood in the street. Militant. masked anti-fascists stared down a line of ICE agents at the gates. dressed in full combat gear with body armor. helmets. and guns.

Despite the tension, it was still daylight. The mood remained relatively calm. Some elderly protesters chanted and sang from a megaphone. Priests and clergy moved through the crowd. Activists pushed carts carrying water and snacks. No one paid much attention to the “protected speech zone” except to use the empty blacktop as a canvas for chalk art.

But even in the calm, the crowd’s expectations were plain. A man wearing a surgical mask shouted abruptly from the crowd, not toward ICE but toward the troopers posted along the edges. “You know what’s next, just go home!” he said. “You don’t have to be here! Go home to your wife and children!”

Most protesters did not want to give their real names. Organizing had become risky after Donald Trump retook office, and, the way people spoke about it, privacy had become part of survival.

Eventually I met Egg again and asked what he thought would happen next. Because of clashes with ICE agents that he described as brutalizing protesters for days. Egg believed Sherrill had sent in the state police to keep the protesters in line. He wasn’t impressed with the “cage,” but thought it would provide a reason to clear the streets later on. He expected a dispersal order at dark and said anyone who didn’t comply would be “fucked up.” “We’re still here because it’s the right thing to do. ” Egg said.

A few minutes later, I asked a nearby state trooper whether there was a timeline—whether a curfew or a dispersal order was coming. “Not that I know of,” the trooper said, shrugging.

Still, the crowd outside Delaney Hall wasn’t drifting. They had a goal.

“We’re not out here to be like ‘fuck ICE, fuck the state police,’” a protester who called himself Roland told me. “We’re here to support them,” he said, gesturing toward the detainees inside.

Delaney Hall is not enormous. From the street, protesters could hear detainees yelling, and silhouettes were visible in the barred windows.

As dusk fell, the scene stayed tense but quiet. Protesters sat on the asphalt to rest. Someone yelled “Fuck you ICE!” between bites of a bodega sandwich. An interlude followed when a small group marched over to confront a right-wing livestreamer who arrived to “evangelize. ” as he described it. Conservative influencers and streamers drifted around and were largely ignored.

By then, everyone—including me—was coughing from the air. A photographer said he believed so much pepper spray had been deployed during the week that residue had settled into the dust and dirt on both sides of the street.

At 9 p.m., the shift came. Some troopers in normal duty uniforms pulled back. Street medics moved through the crowd with word that ICE was planning a shift change. Clashes, protesters said, often flared when vehicles moved in and out of the facility. Earlier in the week. ICE had relocated a detainee involved in the internal protests to another facility. prompting outrage from family members and protesters.

As twilight turned to darkness, the crowd split when commotion broke out down the street. The state police were back. A sergeant read out an order to disperse over a loudspeaker. Protesters yelled back. The sergeant’s SUV drove away. Farther north, down the street, riot police appeared in a line.

What people on both sides believed was coming arrived quickly. Protesters pulled on masks. For a moment, ICE agents at the gate faded from attention.

The riot line marched forward until it was in the faces of the protest’s front line. “GET BACK. GET BACK. GET BACK,” the cops chanted, muffled inside gas masks. Then came flash-bang grenades—“three concussions,” as the sound carried down the street—followed by a push of the line itself.

Mounted police tried to form up behind the riot unit. Horses danced and skittered around as grenades went off. The crowd expanded into the full width of the street. and I ended up trapped near the side of the cops’ back line. I watched an officer with a grenade launcher raise and fire a canister of tear gas down the street; it exploded loudly. and gas billowed out and blew back toward him. The riot line split abruptly, and the mounted unit charged into the gap, forcing protesters back again.

The riot line reached the protected speech area. Orange fences were ripped aside, metal clangs ringing as the horses retreated. At the edges, troopers started making arrests, slamming protesters to the ground. I watched them lead an old man forward. eyes streaming as he groaned and retched. his hands zip-tied behind his back. A volunteer screamed, “Legal aid!. Legal aid!. What’s your name!” He found enough breath to stand straighter and enunciate every syllable. Minutes later, officers escorted another woman through the gap. She moaned in pain, one leg unable to support her weight. I couldn’t hear her name.

Protest chants died down as grenades and gas took over the street. The gas drifted down the road, enveloping everyone. State troopers pushed past Delaney Hall, where ICE officers watched from behind the facility’s presence and gates.

When the street cleared for a moment, ICE officers moved out across the street to where protesters had stacked aid supplies and food. They began trashing everything in sight. Behind the gates, the facility opened, and a line of cars streamed out—ICE and DHS officers leaving for the day.

After the ICE cars were gone. the state police fired one more volley of gas and flash-bangs and then retreated down the street into darkness northward. Protesters regrouped slowly, coughing and catching their breath. One volunteer in an orange vest said the violence was tied to timing. “This is all about a fucking shift change,” the volunteer said. “They did all that so they could fucking leave.”.

With the street cleared, the protesters turned back to the ICE agents at the gate. A boombox was brought out. For the moment, nobody pushed for more confrontation; some protesters peeled off masks, laughed off the adrenaline, and others worked to document what they had seen.

Around 10:45—roughly 45 minutes after the first call to disperse—the crowd was already regrouping. “Whose streets!” someone yelled. “Our streets!”

On Saturday, protests continued.

During the day, Sherrill re-established special zones for protesters. One zone included a pro-ICE right-wing counter protest, while state police were deployed to keep the two sides apart. A small group of Proud Boys showed up and traded insults with protesters from within their own enclosure before beating a quick retreat. The crowds swelled.

Left-wing livestreamer Hasan Piker arrived and was drawn into clashes with trolls and an even larger contingent of right-wing influencers trying to rope him into debates. After dark, the state police moved in again.

For some protesters, it’s hard to absorb a beating night after night. Watching politicians who claim to support them order police to keep them in line can feel like defeat. But the sustained protests turned Delaney Hall detainees into a national story. leaving politicians unable to ignore the images outside the fence.

The account of how the confrontation started diverges sharply depending on who’s telling it. The protests outside Delaney Hall were not framed as the kind of sparks that come from PR stunts and rhetoric. Here. the demonstrations sprang from what the people on the street described as a small. dedicated community response to mistreatment of a few hundred detainees.

Politicians were not absent from the scene, though. The narrative on the street included name-checks: Markwayne Mullin posting constantly about rioters, and former DHS commander Gregory Bovino trying to recapture relevance.

Even so, the practical impact on families remained immediate and blunt: visiting hours at Delaney Hall were still canceled.

Many families, organizers said, didn’t know that and kept showing up anyway. Cat. an organizer with the immigrant rights group Cosecha. told me that when families arrived they found a militarized compound closed up tight. “No one, except the men with guns and armor, goes in, and few come out,” Cat said.

Later in the night, as the clashes continued, Giancarlo and his wife—long-time activists—stood watching the still-raging street violence. “At least when we protested Obama it wasn’t this level of violence. ” Giancarlo said. as an officer sprayed a crowd of protesters at a barricade with pepper balls. “Now it’s just a whole different beast.”.

The tension outside Delaney Hall has become cyclical: day brings thinner crowds and temporary calm, night brings dispersal orders and gas, and every round resets the clock for families waiting to see the people inside.

Delaney Hall immigration detention ICE DHS Mikie Sherrill Newark protests hunger strike labor strike protected speech zone pepper spray tear gas flash-bang grenades state police