Stop the ICE attacks on migrants, supporters in NJ!

There are no limits to the violence Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents will use against migrants and their supporters. This is clear from crimes including the January murders of activists Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, the December murder of Keith Porter Jr. in Los Angeles and the deaths of over 50 migrants held in “detention centers” across the U.S. — really concentration camps — since President Donald Trump took office.

This brutality is on display again in Newark, New Jersey, outside the recently reopened Delaney Hall center, currently privately run by the notorious GEO Group. About 300 migrants began a hunger strike on May 22 to protest deplorable conditions, including rotten food and lack of access to medical care. 

“People just sleep on the floor — overcrowded rooms, cold showers, no food, extremely cold in the cells with no blankets. Not sound conditions to live in,” said Selenia Destefani, an attorney for the detainees. (CNN, May 26)

Immigrant rights activists began demonstrating in solidarity outside the facility on May 25 after reports surfaced that leaders of the hunger strike, including Martin Soto, would be transferred to a different facility farther from their loved ones. Soto’s spouse, Gabriela Soto, who is pregnant with the couple’s third child, organized the protest. Hunger strikers’ demands include: no retaliation against them and for the release of elders, children and those with a health condition.

ICE cops outside the center reacted with violence, arresting at least one protester and teargassing and pepper spraying others. U.S. Senator Andy Kim of New Jersey was among those sprayed, and the state’s governor, Mikie Sherrill, who sought to investigate the conditions that sparked the hunger strike, was denied entry to Delaney Hall. Some protesters complained that the politicians weren’t doing enough about the situation, asking Sherrill why she waited four days after the hunger strike began to show up.

Mussab Ali, a Jersey City activist and candidate for U.S. Congress, was hit by a tear gas canister and thrown to the ground by ICE agents.

When questioned by the news media about the conditions in Delaney Hall and the attacks on the demonstrators, the Department of Homeland Security completely denied the allegations and accused government officials who were present during the protest of “spreading smears about ICE law enforcement.” (CNN, May 26)

New Jersey immigrant rights activists have been fighting for justice for some time. On May 1, 2025, the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice and other groups rallied outside the federal courthouse in Philadelphia to demand continuation of the New Jersey ban on ICE detention centers. The ban, state law AB5207, was passed in 2021 but was partially overturned by federal courts in 2023. This has allowed Core Civic and GEO Group to resume operating ICE concentration camps.

Workers World is in complete solidarity with the New Jersey immigrant rights movement. Close the concentration camps! Abolish ICE! Free them all!