Protests, arrests, and clashes outside Newark’s Delaney Hall ICE detention center

Nearly 40 women detained at Delaney Hall join striking men and outline demands ‘rooted in basic human rights’ Dozens of women detained inside the Delaney Hall immigration detention facility in New Jersey announced their participation in a hunger and labor strike, advocates announced on Thursday.The women, detained in unit 1 of the contentious privately run facility, also released a new list of demands. They are calling on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to release women under 21, women with medical conditions and mothers. They are also demanding improved conditions inside the facility and for their immigration cases to proceed more quickly. Continue reading...

As protests flare at New Jersey’s Delaney Hall, Jessica Ordaz examines the US’s complex relationship with migration and detentionFor more than two weeks, at least 300 detainees at the Delaney Hall immigration detention center have been on a hunger and labor strike. They describe “horrible” conditions at the Newark, New Jersey, facility: spoiled food, inadequate medical care and poor living conditions. Others have alleged physical abuse by guards, including being beaten and pepper-sprayed by a riot squad, causing some detainees to be rushed to the hospital. They’re calling for a meeting with the New Jersey governor, Mikie Sherrill, to urge the immediate release of all detainees from the privately operated 1,000-bed center. As of now, the Department of Homeland Security has partly restored family visitation at the center and released pregnant detainees. To raise the alarm, protests have persisted outside Delaney, and violent clashes between demonstrators and law enforcement officials have escalated. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have wielded batons and used pepper spray and stun guns against protesters, journalists and a US senator. Federal authorities arrested demonstrators on allegations of assaulting law enforcement officers, and Sherrill deployed the New Jersey state police to the protests, leading to the arrests of more than 60 people in a single night. Meanwhile, ICE officers abruptly transferred Martin Soto, a detainee held in solitary confinement for being a suspected strike leader.Soto’s story, and that of the hundreds of detainees on strike, fits into a long history of immigrant incarceration – and how detainees resisted – said Jessica Ordaz, a historian and professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado Boulder and the author of The Shadow of El Centro: A History of Migrant Incarceration and Solidarity. Strikes have been reported at other facilities across the country, including in New Mexico and California, where detainees are protesting over water quality, mold and a lack of medical care. Continue reading...

Protests have intensified outside the Delaney Hall facility in Newark, where detainees inside launched a hunger strike.

Click to expand Image The silhouettes of detainees being held at Delaney Hall during a protest on May 30, 2026, in Newark, New Jersey. © 2026 Matthew Hatcher / SOPA Images/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images) Citing medical neglect, lack of sanitation, spoiled food, denial of bond, and coercion to sign legal documents that result in deportation, over 300 women and men detained at Delaney Hall, a New Jersey immigration detention facility run by the private, for-profit company GEO Group have reportedly been on a labor and hunger strike since May 22.On June 2, the attorney general filed a lawsuit against GEO Group, demanding that the company grant health inspectors access to the facility. GEO Group has not yet responded to requests for comment from several news outlets.As the strike continues, detained people have reported that officers have retaliated by beating, pepper spraying, or transferring them to other facilities. Outside the facility, ICE and local law enforcement have clashed with, and used force against, protesters who have gathered in support of the hunger and labor strike.Dangerous and inhumane conditions are a significant problem at other immigration detention centers nationwide.Investigations by Human Rights Watch over the years have shown health care at several immigration detention facilities to be inadequate, sometimes contributing to preventable deaths. The federal government’s gutting of oversight bodies has made it harder to check abuses, and the 2026 mortality rate in ICE detention is on track to be the highest in 20 years.Because of worsening detention conditions and the administration's expansion of its mandatory detention policy, people in detention have turned to signing voluntary departure agreements, often despite having a legal right to stay in the US. New York and New Jersey immigration courts saw a 1,373 percent increase in voluntary departures between July and October 2025 compared to the same period in the previous year.The strikers detained in Delaney Hall are calling for DHS to “release medically vulnerable, elderly, pregnant, and young detainees.” They are also asking to meet with the New Jersey governor, for immigration judges to meaningfully review their cases, for federal courts to review their habeas petitions, and for DHS to end pressuring detained people to sign voluntary departure agreements or deportation documents.State and federal leaders should urgently address the allegations of abuses and inhumane conditions at Delaney Hall as a step towards ending abusive detention practices nationwide.

Tensions rose at a Newark, New Jersey, immigration detention center on Saturday as a group of pro-ICE protesters faced off with demonstrators who have maintained a presence outside the facility for more than a week in support of detainees who they say are enduring inhumane conditions inside. NBC News’ Valerie Castro reports.

A Newark detention center has been at the forefront of anti-ICE protests – and now counterprotestsProtests continued on Saturday in front of the Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark, New Jersey, as a hunger and labor strike inside reached its ninth day, with detained immigrants demanding improved conditions and medical care.On Saturday morning, a small group of rightwing counterprotesters in Trump hats began demonstrating outside the facility waving signs and chanting slogans in support of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The protesters supporting the detained immigrants and the counterprotesters supporting ICE yelled at each other across barricades set up by state police. Continue reading...