The Newark residents who never leave the side of migrants locked up in Delaney Hall

Terri Suess is sitting behind the wheel, desperately trying to find a van full of migrants that left Delaney Hall minutes earlier. She drives the 10 minutes from the detention center in Newark to the New Jersey International Airport, convinced the van is headed north of the airport. She claims that days earlier, she followed another van there and saw a group of migrants being loaded onto a plane. But this Tuesday, she can’t track them: she arrives and finds no sign of the vehicle or the men on board. “Shit,” she mutters. Frustrated, she returns to Delaney Hall, joining the group of people who will spend the day protesting the detention of migrants at this center, as they have done for the past month.

Suess began protesting outside the facility in Newark — New Jersey’s largest city and part of the New York metropolitan area — in late April. It was already known then that the opening of the first migrant detention center of the second Trump era was imminent. When the arrival of the first detainees was confirmed in early May, despite the center lacking the required city permits to operate, the retired professor and community organizer, who has been working for the closure of prisons like this one for over 10 years, felt she needed to do more.

She met with Kathy O’Leary, a member of Pax Christi USA, a Catholic peace movement in the United States, who has also been working for the rights of immigrants in New Jersey for over a decade. Together, they decided to launch a local chapter of Eyes on ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), joining a national protest movement against the Trump administration’s anti-immigration crusade.

Since then, protests, prayer vigils and other actions have been held in front of the Newark center virtually every day. More than 20 community organizations from across New Jersey have joined the cause. O’Leary asserts that the mobilization has been entirely organic: “Immigrant rights organizing in New Jersey is at least three decades old. We know each other. We have communication networks already set up so it’s been really easy to just use them and get it off the ground.” Li Adorno, organizer of the Cosecha movement, sums it up in a simple phrase: “It’s been a struggle of the people.”

Shifts have been organized to ensure there are always people protesting at the site. They also post schedules on social media so anyone can join. The groups vary in size each day; this Tuesday morning there are about eight people. Standing on the sidewalk in front of the center’s entrance, they defy the June sun that signals the beginning of summer, with no shade in sight. They carry signs that often elicit sympathetic honks and cheers from passing drivers.

Delaney Hall is located in an industrial area on Doremus Avenue, which runs parallel to Newark Bay. The center is just a few miles north of the airport and the Port of Newark. Therefore, hundreds of trucks pass through the road in front of the jail every day, leaving a trail of gray smoke and the smell of diesel. The stench becomes suffocating every few minutes when the wind picks up or changes direction, and the fumes from the used oil recycling center and the wastewater treatment plant located a block south are also added. The stench is overwhelming. Protesters say they leave here feeling sick after hours of breathing those chemicals.

Despite this, they return every day and are committed to continuing to protest until further notice. The demonstrations reached 100 people a day when Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, a fierce critic of Donald Trump’s immigration agenda, joined them in the second week of May. The mayor, who is also a candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor of New Jersey in this month’s primaries, had promised to do everything possible to keep the center out of service (it had been closed since 2017).

Baraka claims that the 1,000-bed facility operated by GEO Group — a private prison company with a $1 billion, 15-year contract with the Trump administration — reopened without a valid certificate of occupancy. Once immigrants began arriving, the mayor showed up daily demanding entry to inspect the facility. He was denied, and on May 9, he was arrested while waiting outside the jail for a delegation of state congressmembers who were allowed inside.

Baraka argued in a federal lawsuit filed this week that his arrest was motivated by political malice, not justice. In the lawsuit against Alina Habba, the acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey, he accused federal authorities of false arrest and malicious prosecution, and Habba of defamation. “Somebody should be responsible for what happened,” he said Tuesday after filing the lawsuit. “To handcuff me, to drag me away, to take my fingerprints and mug shots for a misdemeanor, it’s egregious and malicious.”

A fight with a national perspective

As the van full of migrants leaves the center on Tuesday morning, those gathered in front of Delaney Hall raise their signs and their voices. They shout to the detainees that they are here for them, who are difficult to make out through the tinted windows of the vehicle. It’s impossible to see the reaction on their faces, but it’s obvious that they all turn to look at the small group of protesters. Some point and wave back; one of the protesters begins to cry.

For them, the fight goes beyond closing Delaney Hall. They advocate against building new immigration jails and are concerned about the implications of the president’s controversial spending bill. The legislation, now before the Senate, includes $75 billion in supplemental funding over four years for ICE to expand its operations. Of that funding, $45 billion would be allocated to expand adult immigration detention capacity and family centers, allowing ICE to detain more than 100,000 people per day. This would represent an 800% increase in detention funding compared to the previous fiscal year, according to an analysis by the National Immigration Forum, a nonprofit immigrant advocacy group.

“If that money is approved, there will be transformation so profound, we will not even recognize this country,” says Suess, one of the organizers. “This is really a fight to stop that massive build-out.”

The protesters have also created a support network for the families of detainees who come to the center to visit their loved ones. They offer support for those who are afraid to enter alone for fear of the authorities, or because they need language assistance, as they don’t speak English. They provide toys for children who arrive with their families, and clothing and footwear for visitors who are denied entry due to the center’s strict dress code (no ripped jeans, open shoes, etc.). They also connect them with legal representation and other resources.

Organizations have been able to find out from family members what’s happening inside the prison and details about some of the detainees. “We know that people have been taken during their interview to adjust their status because they married a U.S. citizen. We know they’re placing people there from as far away as Boston. People are coming from Massachusetts and Maryland and Pennsylvania and New York to visit their loved ones,” says O’Leary, an organizer with Pax Christi USA.

“We’re also hearing that people are not getting their medication, that they’re being processed and then it takes multiple days for them to start up their medication again. And then when they get their medication they’re not sure that it’s the same that they were getting‚” she adds. They’ve also received complaints that the food detainees receive “is terrible” and that they aren’t fed frequently. “We’ve heard of people that are getting breakfast early in the morning, like 6, 7 a.m., and then they’re not getting dinner until 10 p.m.”

The conditions described are consistent with what other organizations have found in detention centers across the country: insufficient medical care, inedible food, overcrowding... “Detention centers are bad, but private facilities are always worse, and this one is just terrible,” O’Leary summarizes.

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