ICE and Prison Guards Retaliate Against Detainees and Protestors at Delaney Hall

ICE and prison guards have escalated their attacks on detainees and activists at Delaney immigrant jail in New Jersey.

By Shireen Akram-Boshar , 

Truthout

May 29, 2026

ICE agents spray a protestor with a chemical irritant before detaining them outside of the federal immigration center at Delaney Hall, where ICE is housing detained immigrants, on May 28, 2026 in Newark, New Jersey.Adam Gray / Getty Images

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As hundreds of immigrant detainees mark a week of their hunger and labor strike at Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and prison guards are violently retaliating against protesters both inside and outside the facility.

The anti-strike crackdown has included attacking detainees with pepper spray and batons, transferring strike leaders out of the facility, and arresting protestors who have gathered outside the jail, which is staffed by private prison company GEO group.

In remarks outside Delaney Hall on Thursday, Li Adorno, an organizer with Cosecha New Jersey, said:

We are here today because we got information from inside that’s telling us that ICE and GEO are going unit by unit, and they’re dispersing gas, and they’re beating people up. Right now, we have already heard that they have gone through all of the units. This is retaliation for the organizing, for the freedom of speech, that they [the strikers] exercise as they do their hunger strike, as they do their labor strike.

He condemned New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D) for only visiting the site once, after four days of protest, and for not launching an investigation into the conditions at jail.

“It is very infuriating that we let ICE and GEO do whatever the hell they want. It’s infuriating to see humanity die inside when these ICE agents are teargassing indiscriminately against people who are exercising their constitutional rights,” Adorno said.

A GEO Group spokesperson confirmed to The Intercept that staff used “chemical agents” on Delaney detainees on Thursday, but did not comment on the question of retaliation.

North New Jersey Democratic Socialists of America, which has been participating in the protests, also criticized the governor for her lack of action.

“We call on Gov. Mikie Sherrill to call off the state police, who are currently blocking off road access to Delaney Hall, to return to Delaney Hall to meet with the strikers, and to use her office to take real action towards closing the facility,” the organization said in a statement to Truthout.

Jorge Alvarez, an activist who has demonstrated outside Delaney Hall every day since the protests began, told Truthout that the goal of the protests was initially to “halt any transfers” of detainees.

The first day that ICE showed up to Delaney Hall was Sunday, when protesters were holding a children’s rally outside the jail in solidarity with the detained and their families, Alvarez said.

“There were people performing for the children, playing guitars,” he said. “I remember having a box of Capri Sun in one hand, and a slice of pizza in another, when people started blowing the whistles that ICE had just showed up.” He and others quickly moved to form a human chain to block ICE from moving forward — only for ICE to throw protestors to the ground, breaking up the line they had formed.

ICE escalated their violence the next day, Alvarez said, with agents taunting protesters, using pepper spray, and shooting pepper bullets. “My hands are up, and I’m telling them, my hands are up, my hands are up.” But an ICE agent still “charges at me and hits me with his baton, in my neck,” he said. “That’s when I realized things were escalating, and since then, things have only continued to escalate.”

Alvarez said that he spoke with activists in Minnesota and Chicago who had seen his videos from the protests and noted how violent the ICE agents were, even compared with their own experiences.

“Despite all this, there is an immense amount of support from the community,” he said. The demands of the detainees must be met, he concluded — and Delaney Hall must be closed down.

Detention Watch Network released a statement in support of the protests on Wednesday.

“Trump’s cruel mass detention expansion is exacerbating the inhumane conditions that are inherent to ICE’s detention system and have been well documented for decades,” the organization said. “Over the past year, there have been increasing reports of death, medical neglect, use of force, isolation, retaliation, overcrowding, lack of food, and rampant transfers that cut people off from their loved ones and support networks. A shocking 18 people have died in ICE custody this calendar year — and 49 people total have died under this administration.”

In addition to the 200 people still on hunger and labor strike in Delaney Hall, 20 people have also launched a hunger strike in an ICE jail in Adelanto, California, the organization noted.

“The hunger strikers at Adelanto and Delaney Hall are bravely calling attention to a long-known truth: Immigration detention as a whole is unnecessary, rife with systemic abuses and completely arbitrary – full stop,” said Nanci Palacios Godinez, membership and organizing director at Detention Watch Network. “People in immigration detention are describing it as ‘hell on earth’ because it is.”

“No one should suffer in these conditions,” she went on. “Immigrants are our family members, neighbors, friends, and coworkers – worthy of dignity and respect regardless of where they came from or how they arrived in the U.S.”