Clashes at Newark detention center spark calls to close Delaney Hall

Armed federal agents and protesters clashed outside Delaney Hall in Newark over the Memorial Day weekend, turning the privately run immigration detention center into a test of federal crowd control and detention oversight. The confrontation grew out of allegations of poor conditions inside the facility, including claims of inadequate food and health care, and reports that detainees had launched a hunger strike and labor strike.

By May 27, about 300 detainees were said to be in the fourth day of a hunger strike that advocates said began on May 22. The facility houses about 900 people on average, a scale that makes any breakdown in conditions or communication instantly volatile. More than three dozen officers stood before a crowd of about 50 protesters as tensions outside the parking lot escalated into repeated confrontations with immigration agents.

U.S. Sen. Andy Kim said he was pepper-sprayed during the clash and described the scene as chaotic both inside and outside Delaney Hall. Kim said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement sent in an armored vehicle and a line of armed agents, along with pepper balls and spray, as officers moved into the crowd. The result was not just a protest, but a public breakdown in the basic relationship between the facility, the people held inside it and the government charged with supervising it.

State and local leaders moved quickly to turn the unrest into a broader challenge to the detention center’s future. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka called for a state Attorney General investigation into Delaney Hall, while Gov. Mikie Sherrill renewed her call to shut the center down after she was denied access on May 26. Sherrill called the privately run immigration center “a failure” and said she believed ICE was working to incite the crowd, pointing to New Jersey’s past law banning privately operated detention centers.

The clash also carries budgetary weight well beyond Newark. Congress was poised to provide more than $70 billion in fresh funding for the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, money that would flow through the Department of Homeland Security and into detention sites nationwide, including Delaney Hall. That makes the unrest in Newark more than a local standoff: it is an early stress test of how far federal detention policy can expand before allegations about conditions inside the walls spill into the street.