Starved, smashed and bloodied: The violence at ICE’s Delaney Hall

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Doremus Avenue is a two and half mile stretch in Newark, New Jersey that parallels the Passaic River and Newark Bay. It’s somewhere you’re unlikely to venture unless you have a specific reason, making it an ideal spot to illegally detain and torture immigrants. Standing outside Delaney Hall you’d never know you were just a stone’s throw from New York City, a place in perpetual motion and proudly populated by millions of immigrants.

On Wednesday protesters stood for hours in a line that had been pushed into moving traffic on Doremus while facing ICE agents similarly lined up on the sidewalk. They shouted protest chants and cheered when giant trucks rolled by and honked in support. One driver even yelled out his window “FUCK ICE!” They’d heard about what had happened in Broadview, Dilley, Minneapolis and other towns, and it had finally landed in their own backyard. 

Inside Delaney hall, some 300 people began a hunger and labor strike one week ago in protest of unpaid labor, putrid food, lack of medical care and unjust detention. Supporters have held strong outside ever since, attempting to block vehicles from leaving with detainees and handing out snacks, water and personal protective equipment to shield them from chemical irritants used by ICE. Some are there simply bearing witness.

Shadows of bodies in darkened windows and phone calls are the only signs of life inside, with visitation shut down last weekend. The supporters have been a combination of family of loved ones participating in the strike—like Gabriela Soto, wife of detainee Martin Soto—community organizers, elected officials and regular local folks who’ve seen this story play out in other towns and are committed to stopping it here. 

Now we’ve learned that ICE agents within Delaney have begun physically retaliating against the hunger strikers: Outside in clear view of cameras, they’ve taken to physically attacking protesters and journalists, pushing one into the wheel of a moving truck and smashing a camera. What’s emerged in Newark is a new front in the battle against Donald Trump’s vicious and deadly immigration policy, and a strong sign that the campaign to abolish and prosecute ICE is alive and well.

I went to observe the resistance myself for several hours on Wednesday. When I first arrived, New York Democratic Congressmen Jerry Nadler and Dan Goldman were finishing up speaking with a gaggle of reporters after a visit inside Delaney where they reported awful conditions. Other elected officials have visited in the past week, most notably Senator Andy Kim (D-NJ) who himself was pepper sprayed by agents. Democratic electeds from New Jersey like Senator Cory Booker and Congressmen Robert Menendez Jr. and Frank Pallone got a look inside. According to a video from Rep. Pallone posted Thursday, a detainee suffered a miscarriage inside Delaney and was transferred out. When NJ Governor Mikie Sherrill attempted to enter earlier in the week, she was denied. She hasn’t tried again since.

While there were a few minor tussles over the hours I was there, the activity I witnessed was relatively tame. A man in a giraffe costume who’s become a mainstay at protests at anti-ICE protests across the country sang crude parody songs, and at one point someone blasted Let It Go from Frozen through a portable speaker directly in front of the agents. Someone who I was told was a right wing streamer stood directly in front of the agents with his back towards them and filmed the crowd, hoping to get a rise out of them. 

But shortly after I left, a livestream showed agents shooting pepper balls and getting physical with protesters. Just after midnight, an ICE agent was seen pushing a protester wearing all black into a slow-moving 18-wheeler going by.

In the stream you could see his leg was run over. While it appeared that agents pinned him down and whisked him away moments later, photographer Will Allen-DuPraw who has been on the scene all week on assignment for independent media outlet Status Coup News and who I met while I was out there witnessed the incident and said he believed it was actually another protester similarly dressed in all black who was pinned down and removed. He did confirm to me that an ICE agent made a “running start” and “kicked them,” which “directly pushed [the protester] into the moving truck behind them.”

While The Handbasket has been unable to independently verify any information about the protester’s condition or whereabouts, Allen-DuPraw told me he received a Instagram message from a person purporting to be a friend of the person whose leg was run over, saying: “By some fucking miracle, they were fine. Just bruised up. Their foot did go under the wheel, but nothing was broken.” ICE has not replied to an email I sent asking about the incident. 

Thursday night the violence picked up again, with independent journalist Amanda Moore reporting on Bluesky at 11:09pm: “ICE is targeting journalists at Delaney Hall. They’re hitting photographers, breaking fingers and smashing off lenses.”

A news personality who goes by King Trivv on Instagram was there documenting the violence and posted a video of himself appearing bruised and saying “I'm going to the hospital, but I was strangled. I was hit in the face. I was thrown to the ground. I was OC sprayed. I was dragged.”

Photojournalist Mostafa Bassim posted to his Instagram story Thursday night that an ICE agent “hit my camera with his baton using full force,” despite him being clearly identified as press. 

Allen-Dupraw said he saw the destruction of Bassim’s camera as ICE agents deliberately trying to “break the tools we’re using as journalists to show what’s happening here.”

Underneath all the violence outside of Delaney is the intense violence inside being perpetrated against those being forced to work for little to no money, served spoiled food, and kept incarcerated despite a vast majority never committing a crime. 

As a reminder, these are the strikers’ demands, via a press release by Eyes on ICE New Jersey:

NJ.com reporter Daysi Calavia-Robertson was able to meet with hunger striker Martin Soto this week after he was secretly transferred out of Delaney Monday night. He’s now being held in solitary at Elizabeth Detention Center, a regular state jail 20 minutes south. Calavia-Robertson reports that Martin has purple and yellow bruises on his right arm, swelling on his wrist and scrapes on his ankles. “My chest is hurting, too,” he told her in Spanish. “It’s probably from the heavy chain they wrapped around my body, from its weight, or maybe from all the movements, from them shoving me into that car to bring me here.”

The wife of another detainee reported Thursday that she got a call from her husband “screaming,” with other detainees in the background screaming, too, “because they were getting hit” for trying to stop the guards from taking away the one detainee who had been translating from Spanish to English for them. He called back later to say the guards were cleaning up the blood on the floor, “because they know they messed up.”

Despite these very real and urgent testimonials, in a brief press conference in another part of the state Friday afternoon, Governor Sherrill didn’t seem to have any concrete plans for how she plans to address the strikers’ demands. Instead, she announced a number of measures being implemented to control and contain protesters’ movements, like establishing a "peaceful protected protest zone” located “very close” to Delaney Hall. 

Sherrill and other statewide officials at the press conference confirmed a "roadway diversion" has been set up, limiting traffic on the road where the facility is located "to protect those assembled." Sherrill specifically referenced the protester whose leg was run over on Wednesday by oncoming traffic as a reason for limiting traffic, but didn’t acknowledge how that person ended up under the truck’s wheel.

As independent reporter Talia Ben-Ora pointed out, “the ‘protest’ is a direct blockade of the ICE entrance. Establishing a separate ‘zone’ negates the protest, helping clear the path for ICE. Sherrill is assisting ICE operations.”

DHS secretary Markwayne Mullin went on Fox News Thursday morning and clarified that Delaney Hall “isn’t a Holiday Inn.” His glib comment was bad enough, especially in light of the prisoners’ abusive conditions and malnutrition. But the most chilling part of his remarks was this: “We’re meeting the calorie standard.” You know who else used calorie restrictions as a weapon against prisoners? The Nazis.

I reached out to DHS to ask if they have a documented calorie standard, and if maggots—which have reportedly been found inside food at Delaney—count towards the daily total. I have not yet received a response.