Detained At Delaney, Migrants Strike For Liberation
<A HREF="/article/detained-at-delaney-migrants-strike-for-liberation/" CLASS="no-decoration"><H2>Detained At Delaney, Migrants Strike For Liberation</H2></A><SECTION CLASS="byline">by <A HREF ="/news/unaffiliated/a-ULK-field-correspondent">a ULK field correspondent</A> July 2026 <A HREF="/article/detained-at-delaney-migrants-strike-for-liberation/" CLASS="permalink">permalink</A><BR><A HREF="/article/detenidos-en-delaney/">en español</A></SECTION><SECTION CLASS="copytext"><FIGURE>
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<h2 id="inside-delaney-hall-the-strikers-and-their-demands">INSIDE
DELANEY HALL: THE STRIKERS AND THEIR DEMANDS</h2>
<p>On 22 May 2026, hundreds of migrants detained inside Delaney Hall,
the largest ICE detention center in the Northeast, announced a hunger
and work strike to protest the deplorable conditions within Delaney Hall
and the rampant miscarriage of justice migrants face in the legal
system. These strikers’ main demands were:</p>
<ul>
<li>The immediate release of all detained people, prioritizing the
elderly, pregnant, young people, and those with serious medical
conditions – while insisting that all detained individuals deserve to
pursue their cases outside of detention.</li>
<li>Meaningful and fair review of immigration cases and habeas
petitions.</li>
<li>An end to coercive pressure to sign deportation or voluntary
departure documents.</li>
<li>An in-person meeting with Gov. Mikie Sherrill at Delaney Hall so she
can observe conditions and hear directly from detained people.</li>
<li>Improvement of conditions at the facility.(1)</li>
</ul>
<p>In a series of five letters written collaboratively, signed by over
300 detainees, and released during the hunger and labor strike, the
imprisoned migrants raised their voices to the world about what was
happening in Delaney Hall. <a
href="https://www.lahuelga.com/#letters-from-delaney-hall">These
letters</a> present a clear picture of the horrors faced by migrants as
well as the strength that the Delaney Hall detainees have found through
organization across language barriers and national and religious
lines.</p>
<p>The strikers described severe medical neglect amidst epidemics of
COVID and the flu, rotten and insufficient food, forced labor either for
no pay or for $1 per hour, physical abuse of disabled detainees, and
sexual assault by detention center workers.(2) Many of our readers will
be familiar with such abuses by prison guards. Delaney Hall has been
overcrowded since the Trump administration’s call to increase arrests of
undocumented migrants in early 2025. The detainees oftentimes have even
fewer connections on the outside and less access to legal aid than many
non-immigration-related prisoners. In fact, on May 28, Department of
Health inspectors were barred from inspecting the medical unit, sleeping
areas, and bathing and toileting areas of the detention center, and
since then, have been denied access to conduct inspections despite
repeated requests for access.(3)</p>
<p>In addition to the abuse in prison, strikers called attention to
their treatment in the immigration system. They reported that they “have
been subjected to court proceedings where lawyers are afraid to
represent us because they say there is a presidential order to deport as
many people as possible without considering or reviewing each case
individually,” and that judges are dismissing cases outright without
even considering them. Migrants are arrested after years of compliance
with frequent check-ins and ankle monitors, oftentimes cuffed and taken
away when attending routine meetings with DHS. Many migrants are also
being coerced into signing documents that waive their right to a fair
legal case and agree to their immediate deportation, without access to
legal counsel or even translation services. Once these documents are
signed, many migrants are deported to countries they’ve never been to
and don’t speak the language of; migrants from Latin American countries
are being sent to other Latin American countries indiscriminately,
including Ecuador, Guatemala, and Honduras, and some migrants are even
being deported to Uganda.</p>
<p>Though the day-to-day conditions of those detained in Delaney Hall
are despicable, the demands of the strikers were not narrow ones,
focused only on securing better prison conditions and more legal rights.
Their revolutionary demands insist upon the immediate release of all
prisoners detained in Delaney Hall for being here “illegally,” pushing
back against the idea that “undocumented” status is a crime. We agree,
and we’d even go a step further – MIM(Prisons) sees every prisoner as a
political prisoner, all U.$. citizens as criminals to the people of the
world (though many are reforming criminals), and the U.$. injustice
system as a tool of oppression rather than justice. Crimes should be
judged by proletarian morality rather than bourgeois legality. That
said, the criminalization of merely existing on U.$. soil is one of the
starkest examples of unjust punishment for something that would never be
considered a crime to the international proletariat.</p>
<p>These hunger strikers’ demands, both the maximum demands (freeing of
all detained people) and the ones concerning their day-to-day treatment,
are righteous and should be amplified. Prisoners around the country, and
activists aiming to fight for the rights of migrants and
nationally-oppressed people, should heed the following words:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“We are not striking to demand better treatment and
conditions,” those in detention said in a statement released at the
rally. “We are doing this to demand freedom.”(4)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Unsurprisingly, these strikes were met with severe repression.
According to the nephew of a detainee, guards agreed to negotiations
with the striking detainees, but instead, attacked them with pepper
spray when they came to negotiate. New York Representative Goldman
reported that strikers told her about “scalding hot showers that have
led to burns and blisters; worms in food; and being denied medical care,
visitation rights, and time outdoors… many of them believed that this
treatment is in retribution for the ongoing hunger strike, which they
have initiated to bring attention to the horrific conditions they are
enduring despite having committed no serious crimes.”(5) This sort of
retaliation is commonly faced by prisoners doing political organizing,
as <em>ULK</em> regularly reports.</p>
<p>Beyond the violence and worsening of living conditions, prison staff
took great efforts to break up the organizing behind bars as well. Many
strikers were moved around the facility, placed into solitary
confinement, and eventually transferred out, with the facility’s
population going from 900 prisoners several months ago to only 300 as of
the end of June.(6) One great strength of the Delaney Hall strike was
its numbers – more than 300 detainees, making up over a third of Delaney
Hall’s population even before any transfers, signed onto the letters and
joined in the strike. Though prison officials were able to target head
organizers, they were unable to immediately kill the strike’s momentum
just by transferring strikers or tossing them in the hole. On the other
hand, organizations of just a few prisoners are very easily destroyed by
transfers and Ad-Seg. This is one of the reasons why MIM(Prisons)
encourages unity, though not on unprincipled grounds. In this case, the
detainees came from different backgrounds and undoubtedly had different
political understandings. But they were able to unite around the most
important guiding demand – freedom for all those detained in Delaney
Hall Of Torture.</p>
<p>Throughout history, hunger strikes have been used by prisoners as a
very effective last-resort strategy, where prisoners, deprived of all
other negotiating powers, put their lives on the line. But these strikes
rely to a great extent on public attention and on prisoners having
people outside to advocate for them; otherwise, the strikers can simply
have their bluff called, be force-fed, or left to die. This is why
Delaney Hall officials and the Department of Homeland Security tried
their best to remove this contact with the outside, cutting visitations
and changing up the schedule last-minute without informing families.
Many strikers were denied visitation rights entirely, and visitation was
briefly ended for the entire facility.(5) Federal officials also
attempted to lie about the strike itself, insisting that there is
neither a hunger strike nor a work stoppage within Delaney Hall.(7)</p>
<p>As of June 22, the detainees are reported to have ended their hunger
and labor strike.(7) The strikers make clear in their communication with
contacts on the outside that the strike was not ended because conditions
in Delaney Hall have improved, but because of the violent retaliation
and suppression that strikers faced. Crowds of protesters still gather
outside Delaney Hall, but the numbers are waning, and public attention
has largely coalesced around various politicians’ promises for
bourgeois-democratic reforms. Despite the strike ending without all its
demands met, it won certain victories; for example, some of the people
whose demand for release the strikers amplified the loudest were freed,
including an 18-year-old who was detained shortly before graduating high
school and a disabled man in a wheelchair who had been medically
abused.(1) The strike was one battle that has fueled the resistance to
ICE fascism in OTI that will continue to be waged for months, if not
years to come.</p>
<h2 id="what-is-delaney-hall-who-is-geo-group">WHAT IS DELANEY HALL? WHO
IS GEO GROUP?</h2>
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<p>Delaney Hall is a privately owned, for-profit detention center in New
Jersey, that holds up to 1,000 migrant detainees. It is owned and
operated by GEO Group, a company that operates private prisons and
detention centers. From 2011 to 2017, it was a concentration camp for
migrants; in 2017, it was turned into a rehab and halfway house until
its closing in 2023.(11) In 2025, the Trump administration signed a
billion-dollar contract with GEO Group, and the facility was reopened as
a migrant detention and torture facility once again.(12) As of early
April 2026, Delaney Hall held 591 prisoners, only 76 of which had
criminal convictions and 123 of which faced any criminal charges.(11)
Despite these raw numbers, the federal government still maintains the
lie that the detainees in Delaney are violent criminals who ICE is
getting off the streets.</p>
<p>GEO Group, the company that runs and profits off of Delaney Hall, is
an Amerikan corporation that runs immigration detention centers, minimum
security detention centers, and drug and mental illness rehab
facilities. Operating in the settler-colonies of the united $tates,
au$tralia, and $outh afrika, as well as in the united kkkingdom, it has
a revenue of $2.4 billion as of 2024 (13), and has cozied up quite
closely with the Trump administration in recent years. In its 2025
third-quarter earnings report, GEO group announced that it had secured
four ICE contracts for four new detention centers, where approximately
6,000 detained migrants are held as prisoners of imperialism.(14) About
a third of all the migrants held captive in ICE/DHS detention are in
facilities run by GEO group, and about half of the company’s revenue
comes from its contracts with ICE.(15) If the clear economic and
political links aren’t enough to make GEO Group’s partnership with the
federal government obvious, the current acting director of ICE, David
Venturella, was the senior vice president of GEO Group up until 2023,
and a paid consultant until 2025.</p>
<p><em>Under Lock and Key</em> has long exposed the <a
href="https://www.prisoncensorship.info/article/the-myth-of-the-prison-industrial-complex/">myths
of the “prison industrial complex”</a> and that <a
href="https://www.prisoncensorship.info/article/mimprisons-on-us-prison-economy-2018-update/">prison
labor is the reason U.$. incarceration rates are so high</a>. Federal
and state prisons are costly operations that serve instead as tools of
population control to subjugate the oppressed nations. The same is true
about ICE as a whole; though migrant detention undeniably serves an
economic objective, it is not as simple as “migrant detention uses
prisoners as productive slave labor.” Rather, the permanent threat of
detention and deportation keeps migrant populations subjugated and more
easily exploitable, as well as appealing to the sentiment among the
labor aristocracy that “amerikan jobs” should go to “amerikan workers.”
That said, GEO Group is obviously operating with a profit motive, being
the beneficiary of astounding amounts of government money. Its 18,000
employees are parasitic to the greatest degree upon the existence of the
organized campaign of terror against migrants – as are the investors,
both big and small, with shares in their stock, as GEO Group is a
publicly traded company. This burgeoning relationship between GEO Group
and the profiteering Trump regime threatens to bring the myths into
reality.</p>
<P CLASS="no-indent">
[<strong>Editor note:</strong> While preparing this article for
publication a GEO Group pig was arrested in Aurora, Colorado for
shooting a protestor outside an ICE concentration camp where there is a
tuberculosis outbreak.]
</P>
<h2 id="contradictions-among-the-bourgeoisie">CONTRADICTIONS AMONG THE
BOURGEOISIE</h2>
<p>The widespread attention that the strike and the subsequent protests
at Delaney Hall received should be used to analyze and expose a
prominent contradiction among ostensibly “progressive” politicians –
namely, that these politicians have gained popularity by wielding
radical rhetoric surrounding “race” (nation) and immigration, and must
maintain that facade while still operating as agents of the
bourgeois-imperialist state.</p>
<p>Newark mayor Ras Baraka, son of prominent New Afrikan nationalist
poet Amiri Baraka, presents a prime example of this contradiction.
Baraka’s political platform is based on promises of improving conditions
for the “working class” in Newark, as well as appeals to his family’s
legacy in the New Afrikan radical movement. He has made promises about
shutting down Delaney Hall and protecting immigrants in Newark from the
upsurge in ICE terror. In 2025, during his run for governor, he was even
arrested by ICE jackboots at a protest at Delaney. However, with crowds
outside Delaney Hall amplifying the demands of the strikers and standing
their ground when ICE tried to silence them, Baraka not only let New
Jersey pigs tear gas and brutalize protesters, he imposed a curfew over
all of Newark from 9pm to 6am “due to the escalating situation and the
increasing need for police intervention”!(8)</p>
<p>Is it right to rebel, Ras Baraka? Should people shut up and stand and
watch, or hold more bullshit party-parade-protests, while detainees in
Delaney Hall are being medically neglected, beaten, raped, and
disappeared off to other ICE facilities or countries they’ve never set
foot in? Would Newark’s “progressive” mayor have sicced the pigs and
called a curfew on the New Afrikan liberation movement, which he grifts
off his family legacy of, as soon as things got a little hot?</p>
<p>Looking back a few years, we see the same contradiction rear its head
when New Jersey attempted to shut down private immigrant detention
centers. AB 5207, a bill signed into law in August of 2021, banned
private prisons from detaining undocumented immigrants. When GEO Group
and CoreCivic, another private prison, sued in 2023, the Biden
administration – the very administration that presents itself as being
opposed to and appalled by Trump’s attack on immigrants – sided with the
private prisons!(9) This lawsuit wasn’t even particularly radical;
liberals love to pretend to be appalled by private for-profit prisons.
But as long as the amerikan bourgeoisie profits massively off of
immigrant labor being relegated to a legally-differentiated subclass,
kept working and living at standards below that which the empire affords
its citizens, and as long as prisons (both state and private) function
as a tool of population control against New Afrika, Aztlán, and the
Indigenous nations, no (bourgeois) party will ever intervene
meaningfully to stop the growth of private prisons, no matter how much
they pretend to be appalled by incarceration and deportation when
election season comes around.</p>
<p>Obviously, getting Delaney Hall closed would be a win for the migrant
proletariat and the oppressed nations in this country. For the strikers
in Delaney, facing the brunt of the brutality from GEO Group, this
demand makes sense, and we are happy to amplify it and to push for the
hall’s closure, whether it comes about through public outrage and
protest, a lawsuit on the part of the state, or both. But the ease with
which the detainees from Delaney Hall were transferred to other
detention centers makes it clear that it would do little more than
disperse the energy of people who only see the most high-profile abuses
as something to protest.</p>
<p>Reforms like the current lawsuit against Delaney Hall, filed by New
Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport, are granted as concessions
by the bourgeois state, and while we see the importance in taking and
being motivated by these wins, we advise everyone participating in or
reading about these protests to avoid focusing too hard on the smaller
goals at the expense of fighting for the end to all deportation,
incarceration, and national oppression within this country. That’s why
we think it’s important that the strikers weren’t just calling for the
investigation of or closure of Delaney Hall, but for the release of all
the migrants detained there and an end to the sham immigration trials
they’ve been facing. And that’s a demand that we don’t see coming about
through the bourgeois courts or being granted by any
ostensibly-progressive politician, since national oppression and
exploited immigrant labor are foundational to keeping the peace in this
sick settler society. So don’t be fooled by this or that politician
trying to play both sides of the issue, getting in a spat with GEO Group
while simultaneously fighting against open borders.</p>
<h2 id="outside-delaney-hall-the-protests">OUTSIDE DELANEY HALL: THE
PROTESTS</h2>
<p>Outside Delaney Hall, people from a variety of activist, liberal, and
religious backgrounds have been gathering to protest in solidarity since
the start of the hunger strikes. They have faced brutality from ICE/DHS
themselves, GEO Group employees, and the New Jersey pigs; tear gas and
pepper spray have been deployed many times, and one woman was
deliberately hit by a car driven by enemy of the people and GEO Group
employee Thomas K. Brown.(10)</p>
<p>These protests have been amplifying the demands of the detainees in
Delaney Hall, bringing together people to show the strikers that they’re
not alone. According to <em>The Intercept</em>, at a protest in late
May, “From outside Delaney Hall, detainees could be seen in windows
raising their fists and lights could be seen flickering periodically, a
signal from those inside that they heard their supporters on the
outside.”(5) Attempts have been made to sequester these protests off to
a designated “protest zone,” with violators being menaced by pigs, a
comical reminder from the New Jersey repressive state apparatus that
“the right to protest” in this country really just means the right to
parade around where the state tells you to.</p>
<p>Like any movement, these protests have their own potential and their
own contradictions. The class character and makeup, degree of
seriousness, and limitations deserve consideration and analysis if we
are to understand how communists working in the prison movement can best
intervene in the broader solidarity movement. Some people at these
protests were accepting the task with the utmost seriousness,
confronting the piggies and ICE agents and coming back day after day;
others were treating the whole thing like a No Kings Day parade or a
leftist party, using it as an opportunity to socialize, get high, play
music during speeches, and otherwise prove that their idea of
“resistance” is hanging out outside an institutionalized migrant rape
and torture facility. Another large contingent at the protest were
liberal religious groups, who have been holding prayer circles and
nonviolent demonstrations completely impotently since the start of the
hunger strike, but who, to their credit, have been much more consistent
about coming out and staying steadfast than the social-protestors. We
commend those from the radical petit-bourgeois youth – the majority of
people on the front lines – for rising to the moment.</p>
<p>Several comrades who were on the ground at Delaney Hall at various
times in the last few months have offered up their thoughts and
observations. Comrade A attended the protests four times in total,
mostly at night, and attempted to intervene politically to shift the
demands from reformist to radical. Comrade B was there one day [more
about that]. Both were among the protesters attacked by the pigs and
tear gassed by ICE.</p>
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<P CLASS="no-indent">
<strong>Q: How many people, roughly, were at the protest outside Delaney
Hall? How many of them were “on the frontlines” versus people hanging
back? Of people staying back, how many were playing important support
roles (medic, photographer, NLG type stuff)?</strong>
</P>
<P CLASS="no-indent">
<strong>Comrade A:</strong> The first two times I was there in late May
had similar crowd compositions - though the latter had probably a dozen
more people than the former. There were ~50-60 protesters in all, with
around ~20-30 “on the frontlines”. The higher end of this scale is more
typified by the second night I was there.
</P>
<p>It was hard to gauge who was on the sidelines in a support capacity.
At the medic tent were probably a handful of 5-10 volunteers. They were
a bit farther off, past the east gate of the facility on an overlooking
hill. There was a clergical choir with maybe a dozen people, too. Some
amateur musicians (probably about 2-3) popped up at different points in
the night and were told to quit it. They were annoying to different
degrees (guitar was quiet enough to drown out, bagpipes I had to tell to
stop almost as soon as they started).</p>
<p>Some vested people from the DSA (probably around 5) positioned
themselves at the back of the crowd by the opposing lane of traffic.
Ostensibly, they were keeping people from running or being pushed into
traffic, but more readily were aiding the traffic to flow.</p>
<p>The next day I was there was more dynamic. The majority of people
were milling about. Most were located past the sidewalk on the side of
the street opposite Delaney. Small circles of anarchist-types were
hatching schemes that didn’t materialize, whereas the bulk were
socializing and treating the situation as a casual affair. This said,
there was a numerical glut; looking back at livestream footage, probably
80 people.</p>
<p>Likewise with previous days, musicians and people blasting music on
speakers were present, though here with less challenge. A small group of
seemingly more militant protesters were dejectedly sitting alongside the
sidewalk along the lawn right past the east end of the barricades.</p>
<p>After calls on the megaphone pushing the crowd to start treating
things more seriously, some people started to push the barricade. This
is when the riot cops were sent in, which started up the second half of
the night in being pushed away from the detention center by riot cops.
From here on, everyone was kind of grouped up in the general withdrawal,
but a handful (~10, with some variation through the night) were more
actively at the front (throwing rocks, kicking back and covering tear
gas canisters, establishing makeshift barricades to disrupt their
formation). By the time we left, there were about 35 protesters
remaining, distributed unevenly from the point of the riot cops’ line to
a quarter mile down. We were at the front shouting at the cops with
maybe fifteen other people.</p>
<p>When I went back in late June, the crowd had thinned to about 25-30
people. After a flag burning, ICE pushed hard, some people were
detained, and more were incapacitated by pepper spray. From here, it was
effectively just 8 or so spontaneous protesters on the sidewalk by the
east gate, and scattered groupings across the street.</p>
<P CLASS="no-indent">
<strong>Comrade B:</strong> On the day I went, I would guesstimate there
was a fluctuating amount of 50-70 people on the frontlines throughout
the night. By frontlines I mean there was a line of ICE pigs (maybe 30)
hanging out in front of a fence with a gate where vans sometimes came in
and out of the facility, and the protestors were in the street facing
off with ICE. Press was also mixed into this crowd, along with some
weird older white guy who was pacing around in between the line of
protestors and ICE singing songs. The crowd sometimes got tight and
filed into lines and linked arms, at other times was kinda loose and
spread out.
</P>
<p>Later on in the night some DSA green-vested safety marshalls joined
in (though I was blind and disoriented at this point lol). Off to the
right side by the building itself (and farther from the gate entrance)
was a crowd of maybe 20-30 people sitting on a patch of grass which
included liberals singing and holding their assortment of signs – some
saying free them all, others about the first amendment and fighting
fascism and no kings etc. In that crowd were also some children and
family members of detainees, as well as some medics and press. Further
behind the lines of protestors, on the other side of the road were also
a couple small groups of bystanders with instruments playing the
Beatles. Further down the right, a decent walk past the lawn of liberals
(not visible from the frontlines) were 2 tents, 1 DSA tent and another
medic tent. There were maybe like 5-10 people manning each tent. Medic
supplies, water, some snacks, masks, and whatever materials DSA was
bringing that I did not pay attention to were all stocked here. I would
estimate 10 medics total (tent area and hanging out in the back/side of
the frontlines) and 10 press people. I didn’t pay attention to NLG folks
but I’m sure they were around.</p>
<P CLASS="no-indent">
<strong>Q: What was the class and national character of the protest – as
expressed by the attendees but also by the chants, the demands, the
interaction with pigs, etc?</strong>
</P>
<P CLASS="no-indent">
<strong>Comrade A:</strong> The character throughout most of the times I
was there was on-the-whole petit-bourgeois. On the sidelines, there were
a lot of white liberals, and generally an older crowd. In this mix were
comingling influencers who maintained a consistent presence throughout
the month, but a dubious political character. On the frontlines, it was
still mostly petit-bourgeois and seemingly a lot of young post-grads,
but the national character swayed a bit more in the direction of Asian
amerikan and Raza diaspora.
</P>
<p>The last time I went out, there were a handful (~2-3) of
people–mostly New Afrikan–who made it out from the surrounding
neighborhoods mostly on the basis of hearing about what was happening on
the news or by word of mouth. These people–less so possessing an
activist or “Leftist” background–proved to be some of the most
consistently “at the front” with us through the evening.</p>
<P CLASS="no-indent">
<strong>Comrade B:</strong> The liberal bystanders hanging around with
signs were overwhelmingly white and older (with the exception of the
detainee family members). The protestors on the frontlines were I would
say about the demographic of leftists and a couple older Latin folks. So
decently racially diverse, probably mostly people in their 20s to early
30s, a good chunk wearing keffiyehs. Before my arrival with the group it
felt like different smaller affinity groups of anarchisty people, didn’t
seem like the DSA people ever tried to take a lead with the protest or
get on the mic.
</P>
<P CLASS="no-indent">
<strong>Q: What actions were taken at the protest? What were the
speeches and chants like? What demands were made?</strong>
</P>
<P CLASS="no-indent">
<strong>Comrade A:</strong> Lacking direction, the speeches and chants
quickly degraded in quality, albeit with some case-by-case exceptions.
The best was provided by a Raza woman who started saying “viva la
huelga”, which we readily echoed. The worst were standard for these
types of protests: “No ICE, No KKK, no fascist USA”, “show me what
democracy looks like, this is what democracy looks like!”
</P>
<p>There were a couple times where I tried to interject when a
particularly bad political line was being promulgated. These were not
always the most eloquent, but they did the job to challenge some poorer
ideas that came up. Whenever the “no fascist USA” comes up, I try to
substitute for “Fuck the USA” and take over the line. Someone came in
ranting about the need to get out the vote, to which I pushed “voting
won’t do shit, we have to fight back.” When the singers were doing their
thing: “stop singing, we’re fighting. Support the heroes striking.”</p>
<p>The dynamic between ICE and the crowd was just people holding a line
and getting pushed back / sprayed / beaten repeatedly, then coming back
to get in formation to do it again. Rarely did I see anyone taking a
step beyond this pattern, and any combativity against ICE officers was
limited to defensive kicks/punches/pushes as they pushed on us. When
people saw ICE vans, they did make efforts to rush it and hit them. This
didn’t end up stopping any, to my knowledge, and ICE quickly
dispersed/detained those who attempted further.</p>
<p>The situation with the police was a bit different, as there we did
make some moves to push on them (i.e., pushing forward on the barricade
and getting some decent ground across the street). That said, once the
riot police started pushing us down the street, we were effectively in a
defensive, reactive position from then on out.</p>
<p>On the retreat, a number of bolder actions were taken up, including
starting a decent-sized fire that took up the center of the road.
Despite its symbolism, this action was limited in what it actually
accomplished. The key point is that it was set quite a ways down from
the riot cops, so the “front line” was kind of sandwiched between them
and it resulted in most protesters congregating behind the fire, while
only some of us ended up closer to riot cops.</p>
<p>Demands made were effectively echoing the strikers’ five demands on
the inside [printed above].</p>
<P CLASS="no-indent">
<strong>Comrade B:</strong> Among the crowd on the frontlines, the
sentiment and rhetoric was definitely more militant. People who got on
the mic (not from the group I came with, people I didn’t know) were
usually pretty eloquent about the mass deportation machine and kept the
demands on the entire shutdown of Delaney and all detention centers and
freeing all prisoners, as opposed to narrow demands about improving
conditions inside. That plus hurling a lot of insults at the ICE pigs,
eg. lots of national minorities targeting the nationally-oppressed ICE
thugs and calling them race traitors and white supremacists, and just
picking on individual pigs and mocking how cowardly they are, how stupid
they look, how they must get off on the physical and sexual abuse of
detainees.
</P>
<p>Internationalist anti-imperialist politics were, I would say, a key
pillar but not THE central talking point. Most of the content of the
speeches were listing off the strikers’ demands every half hour or so,
talking about the foundational violence of the U.S. and the prison
industrial complex and how this isn’t new, the terrible conditions
people were facing inside, specific cases of migrants who were murdered
by the state. Once or twice someone would talk about voting harder and
holding the mayor accountable and hating on Trump, but it would get shut
down by someone else on the megaphone immediately. Some non-serious
elements (like the aforementioned older white man) would weave in and
out but would get a talking to. We also often appealed to the people
standing on the sidelines to get their ass on the line and stop singing
their bullshit, and of course they never listened. But the main protest
itself I would say was pretty disciplined and confrontational with an
internationalist spirit to end the slow genocide of migrants and Black
people in the U.S. and the endless terror on the global south. When the
pigs advanced on us, most people held the line until they overpowered us
and we had to disperse. People came prepared with gas masks and were
ready to take a fight.</p>
<P CLASS="no-indent">
<strong>Q: Were there any particular major Left/liberal organizations
there? Were any politicians or wannabe politicians attempting to co-opt
things? (e.g. the Dem senators who went on a quiet day to check it out)
Were people distributing/selling literature, calls to action,
etc?</strong>
</P>
<P CLASS="no-indent">
<strong>Comrade A:</strong> Politicians mostly came out in the daytime,
so I don’t have extensive experience there. There was a democratic
socialist politician, Mussab Ali, who was there in May before things got
hot. No literature was really distributed to my knowledge; the
prevailing calls to action were to continue protesting.
</P>
<p>The largest and most influential group is Cosecha NJ, who has the
most extensive connection to families and detainees. They publicized the
letters from the detainees on their website and have been working
extensively with family members like Gabriela Soto. I don’t know much
about them at all. It seems like they do push for more reformist
politics, indulging family members like Gabriela by focusing efforts
towards getting petition signatures for her husband’s discretionary
release from an Elizabeth corrections facility. Apparently ICE said he
could be sent out if they get 10,000 signatures. Other groups making
calls for protests were coalition groups like “By Any Means Necessary”
(BAMN). Their materials and flyers that have been distributed along
Ferry St. in the nearby neighborhood of The Ironbound emphasized Trump
too much for my liking, but I don’t know their political line, on the
whole.</p>
<P CLASS="no-indent">
<strong>Comrade B:</strong> Main marked group I noticed was DSA, they
were honestly tucked away in their tent most of the time and did not
command any authority. They were distributing/selling their own
literature and merch I believe but again, didn’t stop by to check. No
politicians there that I know of.
</P>
<P CLASS="no-indent">
<strong>Q: What groups, individuals, and/or political lines were
asserting leadership over the protest itself?</strong>
</P>
<P CLASS="no-indent">
<strong>Comrade A:</strong> Owing to the specific features there,
daytime political leadership was very different than nighttime
on-the-ground political leadership. On the whole, leadership has been
taken up by Cosecha, owing to their direct social base in the family
members and resultant ability to communicate with detainees.
</P>
<p>In terms of the night, there wasn’t really leadership to speak of.
The protests – more particularly early on – were largely dissociated
people who were invested in politics but didn’t specifically propagate
an organizational line or try to get others on it. Insofar as I saw, the
crowd had a wholly spontaneous character and was easy enough to maneuver
(within reason) if you wanted to assert leadership.</p>
<P CLASS="no-indent">
<strong>Comrade B:</strong> Like what I said above, young people who
were not about electoral politics demanding for the destruction of
Delaney and U.S. empire at large definitely asserted leadership and
overpowered the “anti-fascist” components.
</P>
<P CLASS="no-indent">
<strong>Q: What was the neighborhood around Delaney Hall like? Were
there passerbys in the area? If so, were there any attempts made to
agitate to those people? Were people mostly coming by car, on foot, or
what? Was collective exit transit organized at all?</strong>
</P>
<P CLASS="no-indent">
<strong>Comrade A:</strong> The outlying area is an industrial zone with
little pedestrian traffic. Some people passed by to see what was
happening, but this was infrequent. Road traffic were mostly either
truckers or pigs. Some people attempted to get truckers or nearby
traffic to blockade the street, to no avail.
</P>
<p>The 25 bus route ended off nearby Delaney, but most people traveled
by car. This was complicated after the 29th well into June, as the road
was blocked off by state/local cops at Wilson and Doremus.</p>
<p>Responsibility for collective exit fell on individual groupings of
people. If you showed up with someone, you left with that group, but no
deeper coordination beyond that.</p>
<P CLASS="no-indent">
<strong>Comrade B:</strong> We passed through some residential
neighborhoods on the trip ride there. It would have been a 20min+ walk
away, but the area around the detention center was like spread-out
suburbia, random unmarked buildings that were like bus garages and
material suppliers. Right across from the facility was a truck driver
gas station.
</P>
<p>Cops arrived later in the night and blocked off the whole road so
vehicles stopped passing through. Most people were coming by car or bus,
there was no collective exit transit organized. I assume most people
walked a few blocks away and then Ubered back to the PATH station.</p>
<P CLASS="no-indent">
<strong>Q: Were demands from people inside being amplified? If so, how
so?</strong>
</P>
<P CLASS="no-indent">
<strong>Comrade A:</strong> Mostly reading the demands outright, plus
chants of freeing them all. We were emphasizing how they weren’t just
demanding better conditions, but freedom. I think this was also
implicitly echoed by the crowd through taking up chants like the above.
</P>
<p>I think that some others in reading out the demands insisted a bit
too hard on things like Mikie Sherrill making an investigation. In
relaying this demand in particular, I still echoed it, but expressed
public doubt over her likelihood to respond in order to emphasize the
underlying point about the need to keep fighting.</p>
<p>As to whether relaying the demands wholesale or expressing the most
revolutionary aspects of them is the correct approach, is hard to say
given the limited ability for dialogue/critique between the protesters
and the detainees in that instance.</p>
<P CLASS="no-indent">
<strong>Comrade B:</strong> Yes, people on the mic would reiterate the
strikers’ specific list of demands every so often as new batches of
people cycled in and out. Emphasis was made on the freeing them all and
shutting down Delaney points.
</P>
<P CLASS="no-indent">
<strong>Q: Were there discussions of long-term strategy, either in order
to keep people protesting outside for the duration of the hunger strike
or to keep the fight going once the hunger strike ended?</strong>
</P>
<P CLASS="no-indent">
<strong>Comrade A:</strong> This was mostly cast in moral terms to keep
fighting for the strikers. Some groups may say things along the lines of
“get organized with X or Y” but since organizational presence was more
so in the day than at night, we didn’t see this as much.
</P>
<P CLASS="no-indent">
<strong>Comrade B:</strong> No lol. I was trying to bring up that we
felt disorganized, there was no game plan or even basic de-arrest or
self-defense training when the ICE thugs rushed us, and it just felt
useless, like rounds of people got pepper sprayed, washed their eyes
out, went back, got sprayed again. We were quickly losing power and
momentum. The solution was just a moral preach, like what’s more
important than coming here every day, and that’s true but when it’s not
backed up by any tactics it feels like empty and irresponsible.
</P>
<FIGURE>
<A HREF="/art/Delaney_Hall_Concentration_Camp.jpg"><IMG ALT="ICE attacks protestors outside Delaney Hall" SRC="/art/quick/Delaney_Hall_Concentration_Camp.jpg"></A>
<FIGCAPTION>
</FIGCAPTION>
</FIGURE>
<h2 id="what-now">WHAT NOW?</h2>
<p>Though the hunger strike has ended and the protests have largely died
down, with the remaining people there being religious charity groups and
scattered individuals, the national attention that these hunger strikes
received is remarkable, and there is a lot we can take away from both
the strikes and the protests.</p>
<p>Within the prison, the primary tactic with which GEO Group and ICE
defeated the strike was the sequestering and separation of its leaders.
This is inevitable in any prison movement, and the best thing that
radical prison organizers can do to fight it is to make sure that as
many people as possible are clear enough in their revolutionary goals,
politics, methods of organizing, and strategy, such that the movement
does not ride upon any one comrade. We hope that the migrant organizers
moved to different facilities will be able to continue organizing there,
inspired by the widespread attention that the Delaney strike gained and
the steadfast dedication of their comrades. The state can move people
around, toss them in the hole, even silence them permanently, but they
cannot change the fact that the united snakes’s torture camps bring
together people with nothing to lose but their chains and cell bars.</p>
<p>The protests outside show the dual nature of the widespread anti-ICE
sentiment. On the one hand, hundreds of people rallying outside a
detention center, day after day, sometimes ignoring dispersal orders and
risking physical danger, is nothing to roll one’s eyes at. Compared to
the buffoonery of No Kings, 50501, mainstream Pride, and other liberal
protest-marches, Delaney Hall has brought radicalized youth into
confrontation with the state. Moreover, the protest’s demands were kept
radical by aligning with the demands of those suffering the deportation
and incarceration system. The prisoners inside have nothing to gain from
symbolic and individualist postmodernist gestures such as those that
were used to pacify the student movement for Palestine in 2024. Changing
Delaney Hall’s name, or creating GEOGroup jobs for first-gen immigrants,
isn’t gonna cut it for la Raza.</p>
<p>On the other hand, though, the lack of coordination and retention,
the performative playacting at confrontation, the disconnect from the
masses, and the de facto two line struggle between some protesters
recognizing this country as the greatest enemy of the people of the
world and others condemning the detention center as unamerikan or
undemocratic, are all symptomatic of the lack of communist leadership
and more broadly of the petit-bourgeois class character. This
contradiction gets buried in more ad-hoc protests like this, especially
given the frequent encroachment of the police and ICE posing a more
pressing issue.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, the protests were never going to accomplish
everything they set out to do, because there was no clear understanding
of what they set out to do in the first place. Calling attention to the
strike and its demands is nice, but to accomplish anything, a protest
must be more than just a call to attention along humanitarian lines. As
discussed above, the bourgeoisie might give concessions to the prisoners
of the detention centers, but won’t ever intervene to end the
deportation system as a whole, no matter how bad they feel about it. A
protest should be a show of force, a disruption, the same way a labor
strike is; in order to be such a thing, it needs organization and
leadership. Despite prison bars, pepper spray, and language barriers,
the strikers in Delaney Hall out-organized the protesters outside.
Communist leadership, along with a united front led by proletarian
politics with a clear understanding of the political situation, was
sorely lacking at the protests. This isn’t a quick fix, but points
towards the principal necessity today of political study and
organization along principled lines.</p>
<p>Delaney Hall’s hunger strike seems to have inspired a new generation
of radicals outside of this country’s concentration camps to study
prison strikes as a tool of political action. These tactics don’t exist
in a vacuum; it is situated within the legacy of New Afrika’s
revolutionary nationalist organizing behind bars, and the ways in which
Palestinians and Irish nationalists, among others, have wielded hunger
strikes against their captors. We hope that this report will inspire
subscribers to <em>Under Lock and Key</em> to study these tactics as
well. We’re not saying that everyone should immediately launch a hunger
and labor strike; between the repression that the detainees faced and
the fact that the strike was ultimately defeated, we hope that readers
can see the amount of organizational strength, dedication, and sheer
numbers that it takes to successfully – or at least impactfully – carry
out a hunger and labor strike.</p>
<p>Someday, the author knows that the news will break that hundreds if
not thousands of prisoners have once again undertaken a hunger strike,
whether they’re fighting for an end to deportations, protesting national
oppression and C.O. violence behind bars, or linking up with a
revolutionary movement outside the prison. Until that day, we must
continue to follow, join up with, support, sum up, and study actions
like the Delaney Hall strike. We learn from today so that tomorrow, we
can lead better, be stronger, and last longer. Until every last captive
in this country’s cages is free.</p>
<p><sup><em>Notes:<BR> 1. <a
href="https://afsc.org/news/whats-really-happening-delaney-hall">Henry
Craver, 25 June 2026, What’s really happening at Delaney Hall?, American
Friends Service Committee.</a><BR> 2. https://www.lahuelga.com/<BR> 3.
<a href="https://www.nj.gov/governor/news/2026/20260602.shtml">State of
New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill’s office Press Release, 2 June
2026.</a><BR> 4. <a href="https://www.njaij.org/dh_hungerstrike">NJ
Alliance for Immigrant Justice Nj Alliance for Immigrant Justice, 22 May
2026, HUNGER AND LABOR STRIKE AT DELANEY HALL: RELEASE ELDERLY, YOUNG,
SERIOUSLY ILL & INJURED</a><BR> 5. <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2026/05/29/ice-pepper-spray-nj-newark-delaney/">Biplob
Kumar Das, Noah Hurowitz, 29 May 2026, ICE Pepper-Sprayed, Beat
Detainees for Protesting “Horrific Conditions” in Delaney Hall Jail, The
Intercept</a><BR> 6. <a
href="https://jerseyvindicator.org/2026/06/25/delaney-hall-hunger-and-labor-strike-ended-after-weeks-of-protests-and-alleged-retaliation/">Steve
Janoski, 25 June 2026, Delaney Hall hunger and labor strike ended after
weeks of protests and alleged retaliation, The Jersey Vindicator</a><BR>
7. <a
href="https://newjerseymonitor.com/2026/06/22/advocates-say-delaney-hall-detainees-have-ended-hunger-strike/">Sophie
Nieto-Munoz, 22 June 2026, Advocates say Delaney Hall detainees have
ended hunger strike, The New Jersey Monitor</a><BR> 8. <a
href="https://www.newarknj.gov/m/newsflash/Home/Detail/227">MAYOR RAS J.
BARAKA STATEMENT ACTIVATING CURFEW FOR PUBLIC SAFETY AT DELANEY HALL,
Press Release, 31 May 2026.</a><BR> 9. <a
href="https://www.amny.com/immigration/july-4-weekend-at-delaney-hall-protesters/">Dean
Moses, 5 July 2026, July 4 weekend at Delaney Hall: How demonstrators
spent their holiday protesting ICE, AMNY.</a><BR> 10. <a
href="https://www.njspotlightnews.org/2026/06/delaney-hall-hunger-strike-ends-after-retaliation-journalist-says/">Joanna
Gagis, Katie Crist, 25 June 2026, Delaney Hall hunger strike ends after
‘retaliation,’ journalist says, NJ Spotlight News.</a><BR> 11.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaney_Hall<BR> 12. <a
href="https://jerseyvindicator.org/2025/09/25/inside-new-jerseys-troubled-immigration-detention-center-its-designed-to-break-people/">Steve
Janoski, 25 September 2025, Inside New Jersey’s troubled immigration
detention center: ‘It’s designed to break people’, The NJ
Vindicator.</a><BR> 13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEO_Group<BR> 14.
<a
href="https://theintercept.com/2026/02/05/private-prison-corecivic-geo-group-ice-bank-loan/">Biplob
Kumar Das, 5 February 2026, ICE’s Private Prison Contractors Spent
Millions Lobbying to Force Banks to Give Them Loans, The
Intercept.</a><BR> 15. <a
href="https://www.npr.org/2026/06/03/nx-s1-5836625/geo-group-private-prisons-ice-close-ties">Meg
Anderson, 4 June 2026, A former GEO Group executive now runs ICE. The
company’s government ties run deep, NPR</a></em></sup></p></SECTION>