A New Jersey immigration detention center on edge. What comes next?

0:00It's Consider This, where every day we go deep on one big news story. Today, the chaos outside an immigration detention facility in New Jersey. Protesters have been demonstrating outside Delaney Hall in Newark for more than a week. New Jersey lawmakers say immigrants held there aren't receiving adequate medical care or food and that they lack due process. But the protests over those conditions have at times turned violent. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has used pepper spray on the crowd. Violent, chaotic clashes hurt everyone. That's Governor Mikey Sherrill. They put the lives of both protesters and law enforcement in danger.

0:37They take the focus away from people inside Delaney Hall and their families. And they raise the temperature with ice. New Jersey Senator Cory Booker visited Delaney Hall last week. He told NPR's Morning Edition that some of those protesting are outside agitators, driving focus away from what's happening inside.

0:54Ras Baraka:These protests outside of Bellany Hall have been going on for many months. But unfortunately right now, there's a lot of folks who are trying to come in and precipitate violence to distract from the moral urgency of the crisis inside. Consider this. A New Jersey immigration facility is the latest hotspot for protests against Trump's immigration policy. What's happening inside and could the situation outside worsen? From NPR, I'm Juana Somers.

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2:55It's Consider This from NPR. The Delaney Hall detention facility has been the site of intense protests since last month, and they've become increasingly violent in recent days. Family members of detainees say a hunger and labor strike has begun inside the prison over poor living conditions and alleged human rights violations. To control detention outside, Newark's mayor issued an indefinite curfew around the facility. Mayor Ross Baraka joins me now. Welcome. Thank you for having me. Mr. Mayor, protests have been taking place around this detention facility for several days now. So I want to ask you, was there a specific tipping point that led you to your decision to issue a curfew?

3:36Yeah, actually, the protests have been going on for well over a year before the Delaney Hall even opened up. So there have been people out there every day without incident, every single day. And I've been there a couple of those days. One of those days I was arrested. Right. What changed, though? What's changed? Well, the escalation. ICE has come and escalated, as they normally do. Now the area had become unsafe. Obviously, there was a fire burning in the middle of the street. People throwing tires in the middle of a fire. A couple of individuals were caught with guns, pepper guns, or whatever kind of other gun they had.

4:09It is becoming untenable out there. and difficult. Like our job obviously is to make sure people are safe and that they can protest safely. So we established a curfew out there. While I don't agree with the tactics that are happening out there from ICE or the state police, as of tonight, Newark will be taking over command of this because we cannot continue to watch what's going on, you know, in good conscience. I want to note here that, of course, not all protesters who are there are engaging in violence, but what do we know, if anything, about who is perpetrating the violence that has taken place outside?

4:47Well, that's a good question because I don't know. And I think it is not fair for people to say who they are. You don't know if they're protesters. You don't know who they are. They could be, you know, people who are pro-ice. It could be white supremacists. It could be anybody for that matter. Who knows? Because we don't know them. We are getting intelligence, gathering intelligence. It may make some arrests. We don't know these people who are, in fact, doing that. But as I said earlier, protesters have been out there well over a year, a year, and nobody has been focused on Delaney Hall like this, trying to close it down every single day.

5:21I want to ask you about what the Department of Homeland Security has had to say about what's happening there. They have a website debunking what they say are misconceptions about what's taking place there at Delaney Hall. And in response to claims that protesters were attacked by pepper spray, they write, quote, on May 25th, 2026, rioters obstructed law enforcement from exiting the ICE facility. They go on to say that officers issued multiple lawful verbal commands for rioters to clear the area. They say that law enforcement followed their training, used the minimum amount of force necessary to protect themselves, the public and federal property.

5:52Sir, how do you respond? Well, that version of the story is incorrect. They probably used their training. Their training was designed to do what they did. And they pushed back into the crowd. The right part is they were trying to leave the facility doing shift change. And there's multiple exits that they can leave at. They don't have to leave through that front exit. They did that, created a situation that was unsafe and pushed people into the street, which is why Newark began to direct traffic, because they began to push people into a street of moving tractor trailers. This is not a residential area, by the way.

6:26People know this is an industrial area of trucks and very flammable materials all around there. During a cabinet meeting recently, Secretary of Homeland Security Mark Wayne Mullen said that if detainees there at Delaney Hall, if they don't like the conditions, if they don't like the food, he says they're free to voluntarily leave the country. How do you respond to that? Well, that's just not true. But first of all, it is barbaric and inhumane to do what they're doing. But it's not true. There are people who have been given by the judge the opportunity to actually leave voluntarily, and they've been denied by GEO, clearly, because these people are getting money to house people in their detention facility.

7:08This fight we're having is with GEO. It's the fight the city has been having with this private company that is being shielded by ICE. You mentioned earlier that Newark is going to be taking over some control. What are you doing? What can you do to ensure that the violence does not continue to escalate, that it doesn't get worse? Well, one, we have to de-escalate. We can't come out there with shields and busloads of police and pepper spray. We have protests in the city almost every week in the city of Newark. We are our officers are trained in de-escalation and dealing with protests, people's ability to protest freely.

7:43I think that the escalation started with ICE. I think the state police followed that, and they shouldn't have. I mean, look, the state police is a sword. I mean, if you don't want to get cut, you can't bring a sword. Gosh, shouldn't have been there at the way that they were deployed. And we got community service officers. We have community folks. We could de-escalate without turning it into what it has turned into. And we're going to show more involvement this evening. I have to say, as I've been watching the images and videos come out of your city in recent days as these clashes between protesters and law enforcement have intensified, it's really hard not to think about what we saw happen earlier this year in another U.S.

8:24city in Minneapolis. Were you concerned about it escalating to that level, potential loss of life? I am. Absolutely. And I think, honestly, that's why the governor acted, because, you know, Homeland Security had threatened to bring 30, you know, tactical units into the city. And some of them were already here, moving into the city. And I guess her thinking was that they needed to act before Homeland Security acted. And I agree with that notion. I just don't agree with the way, you know, the state police behaved, just like ICE. We shouldn't have we shouldn't have took on their persona. Last thing, we've got a few seconds left here.

9:01As people around the country continue to watch what's taking place there in Newark, what do you want people outside of Newark, outside of New Jersey to know right now? Right, that we need to be focused on what's going on inside of Delaney Hall. A lot of attention is being pushed on what's happening outside. There are people, pregnant women who have miscarried food that is terrible, disease that is being let to run rampant. The conditions are horrible. We'll have to leave it there, unfortunately. Ross Baraka is the mayor of Newark, New Jersey. Thank you for your time, sir. You got it. Thank you.

9:30NPR reached out to Secretary of Homeland Security Mark Wayne Mullen to discuss the protests at the Delaney Hall detention facility. He turned down our request for an interview. This episode was produced by Michelle Aslam and Alejandra Marquez-Hance with audio engineering by Ted Meebane. It was edited by Courtney Dorning and Tenbeat Ermias. Our Anarim Executive Producer is Courtney Dorning.

9:55It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Juana Somers. This message comes from Bombas. Your feet hit the ground an average of 2 ,000 times in a mile. Bombas sports socks are designed to support you every step. Sprint to bombas.com slash NPR and use code NPR for 20 % off your first purchase. This message comes from NPR sponsor, NetSuite. Every business is asking the same question. How did they make AI work for them? With NetSuite by Oracle, you can put AI to work today. NetSuite is the number one AI cloud ERP, trusted by over 43 ,000 businesses. It's the unified suite that brings your financials, inventory, commerce, HR, and CRM together.

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