Prisoner Hunger Strike in Newark Sparks Clash With ICE Thugs
Solidarity riot at Delaney Hall teaches us many lessons necessary for these increasingly revolutionary times.
Over the past nine days, immigrant prisoners in the Newark, New Jersey, detention center, Delaney Hall, went on a hunger and labor strike after being faced with appalling conditions. The prisoners cited terrible food quality, said to be “crawling with worms,” absent medical treatment, beatings, abysmally low pay, no due process, and being “treated like animals.” Outside of the prison, activists have escalated protests in solidarity, demanding freedom for the prisoners, especially for those who are elderly, pregnant, and sick. The strike has now grown to over 300 prisoners, some of whom have been pictured waving to supporters from the prison windows.
In response, ICE agents have been reported to have beaten and tortured prisoners partaking in the strike, in many cases throwing them in solitary confinement. Prisoners seeking freedom are hit with an over $50,000 bail even if they have a clean criminal record, and have been denied access to their lawyer. In many cases, these immigrants were arbitrarily arrested from job sites or were taken away right after court hearings or green card appointments.
Profiting from this concentration camp is GEO Group, a private prison contractor that allows the federal government to institute what is effectively slavery. Out of the range of federal oversight, this private corporation is legally allowed to charge as little as $1 an hour for so-called ‘voluntary labor,’ which is generally just forced by punishing those who don’t ‘volunteer.’ Being an agency that arbitrarily detains immigrants based on race, throws people into this prison regardless of conviction, and forces them to perform labor, ICE has overridden multiple Constitutional rights that have meant effectively nothing to the Trump administration. It is reported that this corporation earns a contract of $1 billion from the federal government, along with the profit from the forced labor output by the prisoners. On top of that, the company also benefited from a meteoric rise in stock price after Trump’s election. Civil rights groups like the ACLU already sounded the alarm at the opening of this facility in February of 2025, demanding that state lawmakers pass preventive measures to stop local law enforcement from cooperating with ICE. Now here we are, 18 months later, and state officials can only offer crocodile tears while the cops under their jurisdiction brutalize people taking action into their own hands.
Protestors and strikers also demanded that Democratic Governor Mikie Sherrill take some sort of action to address their concerns and meet with them. Since the beginning of the strike, Sherrill has entirely ignored the people on the ground and offered only empty promises. Like any capitalist-beholden politician, her public image was more important, and thus she sought to de-escalate rather than escalate in order to end the abuse. At a news conference, she said, “I have never thought Delaney Hall should open,” even as she did nothing to prevent it from opening. Sherill still claims to want the entire facility to be closed. However, one report said she had reached “common ground” with DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, the modern-day-nazi behind this barbaric scene. So that implies she is completely lying, and that the “common ground” is just some marginally better version of the status quo at best.
One of Sherill’s solutions was to create designated protest zones to cage in those on the ground who were actually trying to disrupt prison activities. In conjunction with that, local New Jersey police were sent out to support the ICE agents defending the concentration camp. It’s curious how a governor can place herself on both sides of the protest line and claim to be “keeping the community safe.” But in reality, the police have wholeheartedly participated in brutalizing the community. Tear gas, riot shields, and rubber bullets have left people bruised, bloody, and burned for nothing more than demanding justice for their neighbors.
Sherill also used her platform to denounce the fictitious “masked individuals,” allegedly different from the “peaceful protestors,” for their “aggressive and dangerous actions against Newark and New Jersey State Police.” That’s the exact rhetoric designed to divide people and distance herself from ordinary people. She went on to say, “The police were not in protective gear; they had been on location since early in the morning, ensuring protestors and counter-protestors had areas to exercise their rights safely.” Whining about the rabid cops who were chomping at the bit to crack protestors’ skulls the night before. These are the same cops that stand side-by-side with the ICE gestapo and joke about murdering leftists behind closed doors. Playing dumb, she writes, “I do not know why these individuals attacked or what they wanted to accomplish,” implying that their anger is completely unwarranted. That is precisely the controlled liberal thought which the Democratic establishment wants to instill; that ‘peaceful protest,’ which has solved nothing on its own, is fine, but as soon as a person is angry enough at the state to start throwing rocks, they must be condemned for the sake of the innocent optics of this side of the protest.
We saw this happen countless times when the masses get seriously angry with their current conditions and start to riot. Liberals are always the first ones to hand-wave away, deny, or denounce radical protest. They want to support the cause but not the means to actually force it to happen. Last summer, when Los Angeles residents rose against the city police and the ICE thugs by setting up barricades and starting fires in the streets, the liberal establishment was angry at them, not ICE. The liberal media does whatever it can to avoid controversy with the fascist right wing to be perceived as ‘neutral,’ and hence, any protest that violates their precious decorum is unacceptable. Liberal media hates radicals; they find their justified rage to be a nuisance, getting in the way of their crusade to play nice with the fascist state. During the Black Lives Matter riots, we saw the racist side of the liberal establishment come out in full force, policing how angry the black community of Minneapolis was allowed to be about the murder of their neighbor. So Democrats are effectively useless when fighting fascism; they all will end up siding with the capitalists, the cops, and Trump when push comes to shove. That means there is no cooperating with them, no bargaining with them, and no allowing them to be seen as part of our protest when they clearly demonstrate their opposition. It’s time we finally learn the lesson that they are our enemy as well; they are wolves in sheep’s clothing.
Clashes ignited night after night, with ICE agents only loosely being able to stand their ground, beating people with batons and spraying pepper mace all over the crowd. After a week of these skirmishes, protestors were essentially stuck behind metal barriers. A loosely defended encampment area was set up to hold supplies, food, and to provide shelter, but it was rather unorganized. When Saturday night came, ICE, State Police, and local Newark Police geared up in riot equipment to brutalize the protestors and move them away from the front of the facility. Initially, they were pushed away from the entrance area, but the state thugs chased protestors down the street with flash bangs, peppering rubber bullets into the crowd, and beating people with batons. One individual received a brutal shot to the rib cage, leaving a deep gash, and another was shoved in front of a moving tractor-trailer by the cops. Tear gas covered the area for the whole night as the cops threw dozens of flash bangs into the crowd, both of which are widely banned for their ability to cause permanent damage. The cops also brought out horses to intimidate and disrupt the protest, threatening to trample people, like what happened last year in Los Angeles. As of Sunday, May 31st, the protests have been effectively dismantled as a curfew was issued by the mayor, and a sectioning off a mile radius around the facility was defended by riot police. After the curfew time, the remaining protestors were still trying to consolidate resistance, and media personnel were quickly kettled and went home.
The primary lesson to be learned is preparation. Remaining vague for obvious security reasons, political organizations in the area need to be prepared to establish a long-term protest should the moment arise. Especially with a week of ongoing action, activists need to be ready to defend the position they hold on the ground through barriers, encampments, and other means. The failure of this particular action was likely due to the fact that no serious party or organization took up the task of coordinating all the support from around the country. As for all citizens, seeking out and joining one of these serious organizations is an essential task as fascism encroaches on our lives more and more each day. We will soon not be able to afford to be inactive in the struggle for our liberation and the liberation of our neighbors.
In the broader sense, this event should serve as a hopeful lesson. In this moment, this should serve as a moment of revolutionary optimism. Although small in the grand narrative of history, we should see that if people are getting hot over this, wait until a major crisis that affects more than just our most vulnerable neighbors. People’s consciousness is changing, and it’s our job to accelerate that change. It’s necessary to make moments like the Delaney Hall hunger strike a national issue and build the connections for when society begins ripping at the seams. We know there will be another crushing recession on the horizon, we know that the fascist state will only continue to ramp up its attacks on immigrants, and we know that the political establishment will do absolutely nothing to save us. It’s in these moments that we can do the most to build our movement to see through the overthrow of capitalism.
Check this map for hunger strikes at Delaney Hall and other ICE detention centers across the country. Follow the money to private prison profiteers including GEO and Vanguard Financial. People with savings at Vanguard should know about its $310 million investment in GEO which is the largest ICE detention facilities contractor.
https://thedemlabs.org/2026/05/26/hunger-strike-ice-detention-centers-map/