Protesters descend in front of Delaney Hall decrying the conditions met by 300 detainees. Photo by Jordan Coll | SOC Images.
The anti-immigrant narrative has become more pervasive under the Trump administration.
Hour by hour, the site of Delaney Hall, an immigration detention facility located in Newark, has been the spectacle of contention as video footage continues to circulate online showing the ghost-like figure of detainees inside the facility.
In the past 10 days, the image of federal authorities arresting dissenters and protesters, with officials and witnesses offering conflicting accounts of who deployed chemical agents during the incident has become an eye-opening onslaught ushered in by federal powers and ensued by a Trumpian agenda.
Members inside the center began a hunger and labor strike against what human rights activist groups described as a facility “plagued by abusive conditions” since it reopened on May 1 of last year. It’s under the private operator GEO Group–primarly funded through annual federal budget appropriations and supplemental funding, as previously reported by Slice of Culture, who visited a facility site in Pennsylvania last year.
Video footage from Tuesday night’s encounter showed more than a dozen ICE agents amid chaotic scenes, though the recordings did not definitively resolve the dispute over who initiated the use of chemical agents.
What The Community Is Seeing On The Outside
In a press briefing held on May 27, Ana Pazmino, the executive director of Resistencia en Accion NJ/Radio Jornalera, an independent Spanish media outlet, addressed that the Trump administration stripped over 1 million immigrants and ended Humanitarian Parole protections for an additional half a million more individuals– an action hammering on the broader economy, as panelists noted at the virtual meeting.
“We are entering a new Jim Crow,” said Guerline Pierre, the president for the Latin Americans for Medical Progress (LAMP), at a recent panel discussing how detentions and security upscaling by ICE have uprooted the lives of immigrants here in the U.S.
In the briefing, she shared details about her visit to Delaney Hall where she witnessed a young woman’s shirt being ripped off and pushed to the ground by ICE agents.
“They’re afraid to come out, you know?” she said at the panel, “So, what we do together, you know, let’s do it together, bring our resources, and make this really loud, because we are in the front line, and we gotta save these folks.”
Another talking point was how stripping so many immigrants of their work authorization threatens to hollow out communities and hammer the broader economy, immigration experts who spoke to Slice of Culture pointed out.
“Juicing profits by inflicting human pain,” said Oscar Chacón, the co-founder and former executive director Alianza Americas, a nonprofit organization advocating Hispanic, Latino American and Caribbean communities.
“Most people in our country have valid complaints about the life they are living. Unfortunately, they have been wrongly persuaded that immigrants are the ones to be blamed. In reality, there are culprits. But it is not immigrants,” said Chacon.
Your local catch-up! Sign up for our biweekly newsletter for local events, more community stories, exclusive wallpapers and more!
The arrest of ICE enforcement is indiscriminate. Adam Marshall, a U.S. Army veteran and trained medic was helping to tend individuals who were brazed with pepper spray by ICE agents, and was taken by ICE agents. In video footage posted on the account of Pax Christi New Jersey, a Catholic organization focusing on social justice, he was released an hour later.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin took to social media and said ICE agents had been assaulted by demonstrators who sprayed them with an unknown chemical substance. Multiple witnesses at the scene, however, alleged that agents were the ones who deployed pepper spray against the crowd.
The plight of the detainees at Delaney Hall drew out members from out of state to join wearing a costume from Handmaid’s Tale, a dystopian TV series in a Gilead-like society.
“I saw what was going on here and it just touched my heart that people were going on a hunger strike because it is so disgusting to eat worms,” Jessica Kelly, a Florida resident, told Slice of Culture at the facility on Friday.
“This is what is becoming of our country, little by little they are trying to take our rights.”
Community and faith leaders stepped up to the plate providing food and hygienic supplies for the detainees as a few individuals were periodically released during the day as witnessed by Slice of Culture.
A multifaith vigil also took place in front of the facility, with members from Living Waters Lutheran Church and Faith New Jersey, a non-profit faith based organization.
“Nobody should be paid a dollar a day for their labor,” said Charlene Walker, the executive director of Faith In New Jersey who encouraged members to pray for the conditions met by detainees. “This is not about just 300 people here and the people outside of here, this is about all of us.”
But now in an attempt to control the matter, late Saturday night, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka ordered a mandatory curfew from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. amid escalating tensions on the ground between protesters and ICE officers.
How It’s Really Affecting The Immigrant Community
Inside Delaney Hall, immigrants wrote a letter on how they first got there.
“We know that ICE agents have orders to arrest immigrants, but in our cases we have been processed, we have done what is required of the law and there is no order from a judge for our detention or arrest because in our arrival we have received a processing benefit,” read a letter translated by Chelsea Pujols, a reporter at Slice of Culture covering issues of public housing and social equity.
“We feel vulnerable and in a way kidnapped, detained without justification, we are being tortured physically and psychologically, due to low food supply and quality that they give in these detention centers.”
The reversal of Temporary Protective Status (TPS) for over 1 million individuals, has been a political wedge in the Trumpian agenda, fleshing out a cascading reality on how the immigration make up is drastically changing in the U.S.
In May, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services updated its terms when it comes to visa holders, now mandating that visa holders leave the U.S. and apply for green cards in their given countries of origin.
The removal of TPS for the following communities places their living situation in a state of limbo: Hondurans (50,000), Haitians (330,000), Cubans (530,000) and Venezuelans (600,000), according to data by the American Immigration Council, a nonprofit organization.
Nationals of Mexico received the largest number of green cards in fiscal year 2025, with 40,790 approvals. Cuba followed with 30,050, then Afghanistan with 18,330, China with 17,150 and India with 15,460.
Rounding out the top ten were the Dominican Republic (14,500), the Philippines (10,250), El Salvador (10,050), Vietnam (9,170) and Pakistan (8,160), according to data by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Immigration and Customs Enforcement held 60,311 in ICE detention according to a dataset from TRAC Immigration with 70.8% of those members not possessing prior criminal convictions.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services quietly froze approvals on millions of pending immigration cases late last month, after issuing internal guidance directing officers to resubmit applications for deeper FBI background checks and to hold off on approving any case that has not yet cleared the expanded screening.
The photo images of individuals who were killed by ICE agents were laid out on the floor, with the face of Jean Wilson Brutus, a detainee at Delaney Hall being at the center–he died within 24 hours in custody on December 12 at University Hospital in Newark, according to an ICE death report.
“Don’t let the message get lost. This is about families in need, and policy change for better conditions and to set all the people free in Delaney Hall,” an advocate told Slice of Culture, who requested anonymity due to safety concerns.
“Roll up your sleeves and come to serve, and not lash out but help out.”
Other names included: Royer Perez-Jimenez, a 19-year-old from Mexico who was pronounced dead after suicide at Glades County Detention Center and Genry Donaldo Ruiz-Guillzen, a 29-year-old citizen of Honduras who spent four months at Krome Service Processing Center, in Florida–he died on January 23, 2025 due to medical issues.
The statements from the ACLU are calling out: “The Trump administration continues to target people decrying its horrific mass detention and deportation agenda, and we need leaders at every level of government to take action to hold ICE accountable and end immigration detention.”
Alex Sutto was among the detainees released on Friday who told Slice of Culture “the only way we knew what was going on was through the news, we could not hear chanting from outside.”
He was being held in Delaney Hall for seven days and did not want to add any additional information due to fear of retaliation.
For more information and resources, regardless of immigration status, you can go to these sites below:
- ACLU Know Your Rights
- ACLU Derechos de los Inmigrantes
- Immigrants’ Right Resources including information on healthcare for immigrants, immigrants right toolkit, power of attorney form and more by the New Jersey Consortium for Immigrant Children, in collaboration with the Rutgers Law School Child Advocacy Clinic, Make the Road NJ and Legal Services of NJ
