“We are getting direct testimony from the detainees from inside that their conditions are nothing short of crimes against humanity.” RJ told me wearily in the confines of a designated “first amendment zone” surrounded by concrete slabs.
The humid June air was thick with the appalling smell of raw sewage and garbage wafting from nearby water treatment and waste facilities. On the adjacent road, divided by walls of concrete, trucks roared by the persistent demonstration outside ICE’s detention facility in Newark, New Jersey, on its 13th day. Supportive drivers blared their horns at the crowd, interrupting us throughout our conversation.
“They are being fed food with worms and maggots in it, expired food. They’re getting sick from this food. They are sometimes given dirty drinking water. They’re not given proper sanitation. They’re being denied medical care.”
RJ said the presence of activists was equally in part to demonstrate support for the detainees being held within Delaney Hall and to “make life hell” for the ICE agents and GEO Group employees operating the facility.
Actions he said likely wouldn’t be concluding any time soon.
From Minnesota to Newark
On May 22nd, up to 400 detainees at the Delaney Hall migrant detention facility announced a hunger and labour strike to protest severe living conditions and the denial of fundamental constitutional rights12.
Solidarity actions outside of the facility immediately followed, with activists descending on the facility to impede vehicle traffic and demonstrate their support for the strikers. Extreme violence against activists by ICE agents and NJ State Police soon escalated the situation into a full-blown crisis.
This new front of resistance against Trump’s ICE agenda raged in a manner not seen since the darkest days of the murder of Alex Pretti and Renée Good in Minneapolis in early 20263.
The images emerging from Delaney Hall were all too familiar. Heavily armed, masked men in military tactical gear moving in formation against demonstrators, snatching and arresting activists who dared stray too close to them. Clouds of tear gas and streams of pepper spray streaming from behind lines of riot police.
ICE and DHS, in coordination with GEO Group, have attempted to break the strike by physical violence and by transferring perceived organizers to other ICE detention facilities around the country. A letter published from detainees inside Delaney Hall on the 13th day of the hunger strike and released by activist group Cosecha New Jersey, details the reprisals, mistreatment and denial of legal rights from detainees, particularly since the hunger strike began.
The 1,000 bed Delaney Hall detention facility is run by private security company GEO Group and has operated under its current contract with DHS since May 1, 2025. Their contract with the Department of Homeland Security to operate Delaney Hall is worth over 1 billion dollars over a fixed-price 15 year contract. In the typical private, public, revolving door fashion of the US prison-industrial complex, a former top executive with GEO Group for over a decade, David Ventura, is now the acting director of ICE.
Echoes from ICE’s occupation of Minnesota also extended to the response of Democratic state and local politicians to ICE’s operations. The municipality of Newark and the state’s Attorney’s General have both launched suits against GEO Group. Both suits allege violations of licensing, certificates and the denial of health inspectors to many parts of the facility. Mayor Ras Baraka himself was arrested for trespassing in December 2025 as he attempted to gain access to the facility.
Despite these ongoing lawsuits against Delaney Hall, city and state public organizations have been no allies of anti-ICE activists. Both the state and municipal police departments have deployed extensive resources to ensuring the security of the facility. Although the state police seemed to have been called off by the governor, following widespread gratuitous violence, which Mayor Baraka deemed "overly aggressive, unnecessary and in some cases, unconstitutional."4
This strange circumstance has led to the two jurisdictions suing to have Delaney Hall shut down, while simultaneously ensuring its smooth operation.
On site
It became abundantly clear to me from several days covering solidarity actions outside Delaney Hall that no level of authority had any idea what the fuck they should do about the situation. The bumbling multi-jurisdictional response had been a disaster from the opening day of the facility in May 2025. Each and every actor, from multiple police departments to the mayor, governor and federal offices, all demonstrated complete ineptitude at formulating an effective or coherent strategic response.
On my first day on site, around 150 activists converged on Delaney Hall to demonstrate.
Newark PD provided security for in and outbound ICE vehicles from the facility. Officers stood idly across the road until a convoy of ICE vehicles arrived. They would then take to the streets in loose formation and force activists from the path of the driveway.
Surely cognizant of the piss-poor optics the State PD had projected with their widespread use of pepper spray, tear gas and batons against demonstrators, Newark PD never wielded any chemical weapons nor batons in their policing. They instead grabbed activists and threw them out of the way with their bare hands.
Two activists were arrested during a police charge towards activists following the arrival of an ICE convoy.
The next day I was on site, June 5th, Newark PD were completely absent from the facility.
In the afternoon sun, a small but determined group of activists spent the day impeding ICE vehicles on the South entrance, as well as GEO Group vehicles from another on the North.
At around 4pm, GEO Group employees with “transport operations” patches emerged from the North entrance to aid employees attempting exit the facility in their vehicles.
They immediately began throwing activists out of the way of the driveway. After several minutes of pushing and shoving, the cars managed to make way through the small crowd and be on their way. All then returned to calm.
This ritual took place over several hours and days. Sitting idly shooting the shit with comrades in the early June for an hour or two, before a convoy of GEO Group employees or ICE agents would arrive. All hell would break loose for a couple minutes in an explosion of noise and violence. Sometimes people would be hit by fast moving vehicles, sometimes they’d be pepper sprayed and require medical treatment. Other times, activists would allow vehicles to pass because they were carrying medical supplies or they had a doctor or nurse within.
I asked one young woman who I’d watched get battered several times with the bumpers of GEO Group vehicles why she chose to do this action5. She pulled her gas mask down from her face, “While I understand this might be an inconvenience for them, this is an inconvenience for New Jersey and the people of America and the families that are inconvenienced on a daily basis. And we just want to show them that going home isn't a privilege. Going home should be what everyone gets to do.”
She detailed some of the vigilante violence from GEO Group employees that activists had been facing as a result of their actions, in large part due to the absence of Newark PD on the scene.
“They are exiting their cars, they are trying to run us over, they're deploying tear gas on us, they've used batons, they've come back. One officer parked her car and then came back with pepper spray, with the intent to cause harm.”
She sure did.
I captured the whole ludicrous ordeal.
One courageous activist in particular had been getting consistently battered by vehicles accelerating out of Delaney Hall. In one instance, as they stood in the driveway during the broiling afternoon, a car exited the facility and launched them about a foot into the air. The activist landed on the passenger windshield, smashing it with a large bum shaped imprint, before being flung into the active roadway, frequented by large industrial vehicles moving at potentially fatal speeds.
The driver exited the car and began attacking the person she’d rammed. She screamed “Suck my dick! Suck my dick!” over and over in their face as the activist rose from the pavement. The activist stood still, silently glaring at her and received several blows to the face from the shoulder of the irate driver.
A man ran out from Delaney Hall in a white polo who appeared to be her supervisor. He physically restrained her, pulling her back from her blows and yelled at her to get in her car and leave. She resisted, emphatically asserting that she wanted to engage in battle, but the supervisor was insistent she depart.
Calm briefly washed over the area as more activist began to show up on the Friday after the 9-5 workday.
About 15 minutes later, the lady whom had accelerated her car into the activists, then emerged to fight one, then returned again with a small can of pepper spray in her hand. She wanted to fight. The white polo’d supervisor sprinted out again, this time with a group of backup. He again restrained her and began trying to fireman carry her over his shoulders into the facility.
Seconds later, another car began to leave the facility. The same activist who had been hit by the car was again struck with another vehicle and thrust into traffic. This time, well after the car had cleared the driveway, a GEO Group employee sprinted towards them and tackled them to the pavement.
Another activist came to de-escalate the situation but was quickly attacked himself.
We had ourselves a brawl.
The melee on its face appeared somewhat like a hockey scrum, whereas players attempt to restrain one another from getting involved as a third man in another battle, rather than actually tossing gloves and throwing punches in their own matchup.
However, the intent was mismatched, GEO Group employees were very much throwing hands at the activists.
At one point, two GEO Group employees ganged up on one activist. One held him in a choke hold as another punched him in the face.
The white-polo’d supervisor again attempted to restrain his employees. He wrapped his arms around and carried the young man throwing the punches back into the facility.
A lady wearing a black shirt began pepper spraying an activist who was pinned to the ground. Simultaneously, another GEO Group employee bashed him in this face with a baton. The pepper spray ricocheted and spread into the air, affected all in its vicinity. She then calmly walked over to two other men and pepper sprayed them from close range. One was restrained, the other was no longer engaged in the melee.
In the process, she managed to thoroughly douse several of her own colleagues and a couple members of the press, myself included, with the bright orange-coloured chemical weapon.
A small group of medics converged on the injured and immediately began to treat the activists for extensive chemical burns. All three of whom screamed in excruciating pain.
Shortly after the melee concluded, a large convoy of Newark PD vehicles approached the crowd and parked. Officers emerged from the cruisers and sauntered over to the activist that had been struck multiple times by accelerating GEO Group vehicles. They grabbed them by the arm and whisked them over to the nearest police cruiser, cuffed them and stashed them in the back of the vehicle before driving off.
When I asked officers why they had arrested them, no reason was provided.
It was the first time I’d seen the police in the several hours I’d been on site.
As the June sun lay low in the horizon, ICE activity on the South entrance increased. Activists had erected makeshift barricades at their portion of the facility. Some demonstrators with whistles served as lookouts and alerted the crown any time a convoy would arrive or depart.
When ICE agents emerged, protesters would hurl insults at them, encourage them to quit their jobs, follow the constitution, and much, much worse. Federal agents with a wide smattering of HSI, ICE and POLICE getups, as though they’d chose their loadouts in a video game, screamed “Move back!”, some more politely than others. They shoved activists from the driveway to make way for vehicle traffic.
Throughout the evening, ICE also had to move the barricades that activists had erected.
ICE agents charged the crowd multiple times and arrested activists, seemingly at random. No activists made any attempt to assault, dearrest, nor throw any objects at agents.
As night fell, the demonstration would run to either North or South entrance to confront vehicles6.
One masked GEO Group employee deployed pepper spray out his window at nearby activists and press from inside his car, for no discernible reason.
Several activist detailed to me that another GEO Group employee had circled back after he’d left the facility and pointed a handgun at the crowd as he sped by in his car.
ICE agents came out in formation with a wide variety of weapons several times to arrest activists in what appeared to be pre-targeted affairs. Each instance resulted in pushing and shoving, the whipping of batons at activists and furious chants of “Fuck ICE! Fuck ICE!”.
Throughout the evening, activists on the North access point chanted in solidarity with the hunger strikers inside. Some detainees appeared at the windows and attempted to match the energy outside. Flashing the lights on and off, waving their arms up and down and jumping up and down. These rare moments of levity, where the barriers of detainment and freedom were briefly transcended, struck joyous elation through the crowd. Smiles, cheers and music amidst an otherwise dreary day of violence and dystopian authority.
Demonstrators took turns with the loudspeaker and boomed Spanish chants, “¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!” [the people united will never be defeated] among other expressions of solidarity. RJ battered a fatigued snare drum above his head, the writing around the rim read the American anti-fascist folk singer Pete Singer’s quote from his banjo “THIS MACHINE SURROUNDS HATE & FORCES IT TO SURRENDER”.
By 1am, I’d been on site around 9 hours. The crowd had nearly all dispersed and traffic in and out of Delaney Hall had totally subsided. As I was gearing up to leave, a lone Hispanic man exited the GEO Group access point with a small suitecase. He looked exhausted. Someone asked “¿Trabajas allí?” [do you work there?]. The man forced a tepid smile and shook his head. As it dawned on activists that he was a detainee being released from the facility, they began clapping and cheering. The man walked over to a car, where what appeared to be his family was waiting for him. The driver of the vehicle, a young woman, embraced him, smiling through thick tears. The family waved at the small handful of activists as they piled into the packed car. Some activists were crying.
“We’re doing this for you!” one young woman said, wiping a tear from her cheek.
Saturday
On my final day at Delaney Hall, the now familiar pattern of action and reaction from ICE, GEO Group employees and activists continued. Again, like the day before, Newark PD were nowhere to be seen.
As I arrived, activists were in the midst of impeding ICE agent vehicles at their access point. Following a brief standoff with an inbound vehicle, over a dozen ICE agents in heavy tactical gear and a wide assortment of weapons came to clear the passage.
Rain fell as night descended on the facility.
Barricades were again erected at both driveways.
The barricades at GEO Group access point were so formidable that several employee’s vehicles were forced to turn back as they attempted to enter the facility7.
A large convoy of Newark PD rumbled Northbound on the road. It included two large armoured SWAT vehicles full of officers.
My main Canon camera became water logged and died (“weather sealed” btw). I whipped out the small Fuji I use as an emergency backup. The rest of the photographs from the evening are thus in black and white and with a different focal length than I would have preferred.
At what seemed like a pre-coordinated time, a convoy of Newark PD vehicles pulled up to the GEO Group access point as a large mob of GEO Group employees walked out of the gate. One held a metal baseball bat. Another wielded a short small metal pipe. Some brandished cans of pepper spray, one pointed it at my head, point blank, as I took photographs. Many were masked.
They began dismantling the barricades and pulling them back into the confines of the facility. Some employees brimming with testosterone attempted to shit-talk activists and challenge them to fight, cooler-headed supervisors pulled them back.
Attention then turned to the line of police forming from one end of the street to the other. Most officers held long plastic riot shields.
A police captain wearing a white shirt bellowed in a military drawl that the gathering was now considered illegal and anyone not following orders to disperse could be subject to arrest. He pointed South and said that the crowd would be pushed to Wilson Ave, a bit over half a kilometre away.
The police were comprised of both heavily suited SWAT tactical response and what appeared to be patrol officers.
The police line advanced. Officers screamed “Move back! Move back!” in unison. Some activists strayed close to the line of police and were shoved with the shields.
Officers differed wildly in their application of force, some pushed lightly with their hands and shields, while others screamed and thrashed with them, sometimes lifting the hard plastic above their head and slicing at activists with the bottom.
All of the name tags of police officers had been removed.
At one point, upon nearing the concrete barriers that defined the “free speech zone” at the ICE access point, officers shoved activists and press alike over the knee-high implement behind them. They tumbled atop one another. Despite the officers clearly seeing the human pile they were causing, they continued throwing people over top the tripping hazard onto one another.
I was thrown backwards and fell to the wet, sandy ground. A towering photojournalist was launched over top of me, landing on my shoulder and head. Activists pleaded with the police to stop as they picked people up from the tangled mess of bodies.
“1, 2, 3, lift!” four activists said as they lifted me up from my limbs and popped me up back on my feet. “Thanks all!” I gestured back at them, holding back a grimace from the pain of my injured shoulder and skull.
“Shut down Delaney hall!”
“Shut down Delaney hall!”
Officers kept pushing activists Southbound for what felt like ages. Their patience ran thin with three activists who were offering some more physical resistance to the advance of the police line than others. One demonstrator who was holding his bicycle against the police line was dragged behind the police line for arrest. At some point in the process of detaining him, he was knocked hard in the head and loss consciousness. His body was dragged around like a rag-doll, hands cuffed behind his back as activists voiced their fury at his treatment.
Two more activists who had been posing tepid resistance to the advance of the police line were also snatched, brought behind the police line and arrested.
A line of demonstrators linked arms in defiance. They screamed “Fuck you!” in response, after every police chant of “Move back!”
A rousing chorus of,
“Move back!” “Fuck you!”
“Move back!” “Fuck you!”
Under a large digital traffic sign that read “PROTEST PEACEFULLY” near Wilson Ave., officers from the SWAT team energetically beat back activists wearing keffiyeh’s with linked arms. Several times, officers that were engaging in a bit too dramatic a show of violence and advanced too far from the formation were pulled backwards by their superiors.
The police line reached their destination of Wilson Ave. and halted their advance. Some activists remained affront the police line. One veteran of the Marine Corp held a large American flag, energetically shouting their disappointment at the what they saw as a grave infringement on the First Amendment by Newark PD.
Police then again advanced to sweep the intersection before the demonstration dispersed into the night.
Mildly concussed, soaked and with a broken camera, I walked home to the Holiday Inn.
Delaney Hall had been nothing less than a dystopian spectacle, one in which only the most vulgar forms of modern US state power could deliver.
A heavily militarized domestic federal security force, infamous for murdering American citizens with impunity and their ideological extremism; a private security operator whose staff routinely assaulted and intentionally rammed activists with legal impunity; a detention centre, thrust into headlines for its systemic infringements on constitutional rights and widespread mistreatment of detainees; a private, for-profit corporation, benefitting its shareholders from a punitive system of mass incarceration, the warehousing of migrants, constructed on the darkest resentments of one’s neighbours based on the colour of their skin; the detainees themselves, a long-suffering migrant underclass, turned scapegoat for a much wider trend of neo-feudalist American decline.
Yet, beyond the unrelenting violence and quotidien misery of the situation, there existed a resilient articulations of hope in the margins of every moment. Strangers held hands as they were beaten by Newark’s SWAT unit, they linked arms as they were intentionally struck by GEO Group vehicles in the pouring rain and they treated one another’s injuries from whatever weapon ICE or GEO Group had shot at them that day. These expressions of kinship in the face of a system so seemingly immovable to expressions of democratic will, often shocked me from my default malaise.
The daily, high-risk actions of solidarity outside Delaney Hall suggested to me that a lot more resistance that looked like this might be in store for this country.
Detainees themselves held in GEO Group facilities are largely responsible for the labour of daily operations, such as cleaning, cooking, laundry, etc. They are paid as little as $1 a day for these jobs.
The motivation behind their strike is detailed in a series of letters written by detainees within Delaney Hall. Read them here.
Governor Mikie Sherrill shot back at the accusation with the outrageous suggestion that the vicious State PD response to activists was in fact to protect them, “We saw [ICE agents] massing at the gate, pointing weapons at protesters ... and we knew what was coming next. We’ve seen it in Minneapolis, and I refuse to let that happen.”
I’ve granted anonymity to most of the activists for their security.
I found it noteworthy that GEO Group, nor ICE agents would ever help provide security for one another.
Activists continued to allow all medical personnel and supplies to enter and exit.
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