11 May 2025

Newark Mayor Baraka Arrested Outside Delaney Hall ICE Detention Center

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Ras Baraka, the Mayor of Newark, New Jersey, was arrested outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center at Delaney Hall.

Baraka and some members of Congress were there with demonstrators asking about conditions in the private for-profit detention facility, which is expected to have a capacity of more than 1000. GEO Group obtained a 15 year $1 billion contract to operate it. Delaney Hall is near Newark Liberty International Airport, from which some removal flights depart.

Although it began operating 1 May 2025, Baraka says the federal government did not get permits necessary to imprison immigrants there. The city of Newark sued last month to try to delay its opening. Baraka pledge to join daily protests outside Delaney Hall until city personnel are allowed to inspect it.

There is also a state-level question of whether the detention center is legal. In 2021, New Jersey established a law which bans private immigration detention in the state. CoreCivic, which operates the only other private for-profit immigration detention center in New Jersey, filed suit against the prohibition. A federal judge ruled for the company and the state’s appeal is currently in federal appellate court.

House Representatives LaMonica McIver, Bonnie Watson Coleman and Robert Menendez Jr., all Democrats from New Jersey districts, were there too for a Congressional “oversight visit.” They were allowed to enter the detention center to see its conditions. At first Baraka was allowed in the fenced parking lot, but then federal Homeland Security Investigations officers blocked him from entry into the facility, ordered him to leave and threatened to arrest him. He went outside the gates to public property. A hot argument that begin while he was inside the gate continued after he was outside it.

Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin later claimed Representatives Coleman and Menendez “stormed the gate and broke into the detention facility” with “multiple protesters.” Homeland Security also claimed McIver “bodyslammed” agents.

Video of what happened next was chaotic, but did not support Homeland Security’s story.

Federal agents wearing neck gaiters pulled up as masks almost to their eyes shoved back protesters. They grabbed McIver as they herded Baraka from public property back toward and through the gate. Agents swarmed around him and blocked protesters from the gate. He was handcuffed and taken away in an unmarked car.

Video also captured uniformed officers threatening to arrest the three Congressional Representatives.

Menendez called the agents’ handling of McIver an “assault.” McIver said she and Coleman were “assaulted” and Menendez was “roughed up.”

McIver said, “What we just witnessed was disgusting. If they can treat three members of Congress like that, just imagine how they can treat people on the street each and every day.”
About the conditions she and her colleagues found inside, she said, “We don’t know if everyone belongs there, and but we knew that people are OK, it’s safe, they’re feeding them. ICE is out of control. ICE thinks it can intimidate all of us. And it cannot intimidate any of us. And we the people will make sure that this administration adheres to the rules that separate us from dictatorships and other third world countries.”
Coleman issued a statement that “Contrary to a press statement put out by DHS we did not ‘storm’ the detention center. The author of that press release was so unfamiliar with the facts on the ground that they didn’t even correctly count the number of Representatives present. [The press release said there were two.] We were exercising our legal oversight function as we have done at the Elizabeth Detention Center without incident.”

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