Shut Down ICE’s Delaney Hall Jail!

On May 22, detainees at the Delaney Hall ICE jail in Newark went on a hunger and labor strike. They demand an end to horrible conditions in the facility privately run by the notorious GEO Group—rotting food, filthy bathrooms, and $1.50 a day wages. Along with the immigrant rights group Movimiento Cosecha, Gabriela Soto, wife of hunger strike leader Martín Soto, organized protests outside in support of the detainees. On May 24, ICE agents brutalized Martín, falsely charged him with assault, threw him into a van before his wife’s eyes, and carted him off to another facility in nearby Elizabeth. Throughout the week, ICE agents and now New Jersey state troopers have attacked and pepper-sprayed protesters outside Delaney Hall, arresting over 15. It is urgently necessary for trade unionists, anti-ICE activists, the left and all the oppressed to rally in defense of the detainees.

The Trump administration and the Democrats have done their usual dance to the detriment of immigrants and anti-ICE protesters. Trump spews lies, claiming the protesters are all “fake.” DHS alternately denies there is any hunger strike and threatens to force feed the hunger strikers if they don’t stop! New Jersey Democrats have been out at the protests, trying to “negotiate,” “de-escalate,” and channel anger into the November midterms. Then on Friday New Jersey’s Democratic Governor Mikie Sherrill, cheered on by the White House, announced she was having her state troopers take over the defense of the jail, where they promptly arrested six protesters. On Saturday, the troopers protected a group of fascist Proud Boys who showed up for a pro-ICE counter-protest. Now Newark’s black Democratic mayor Ras Baraka has imposed a nighttime curfew against protesters.

Clearly, the Democrats are no opposition to Trump. They are not going to stop the ICE thugs, and neither will moral outrage on its own. What’s needed is to mobilize the power of the multiracial labor movement. Just blocks from Delaney Hall are massive concentrations of longshoremen, truckers, logistics, warehouse, and airport workers. These workers, along with Newark’s downtrodden ghetto masses, have every interest in coming out against the miserable conditions at Delaney Hall—which point to what the racist rulers have in store for all of us. Attacks on immigrants divide the working class and are a dagger against the trade unions. The same police forces who are attacking anti-ICE protesters are a daily menace to New Jersey’s black population and will be unleashed against militant union picket lines.

The Partisan Defense Committee has donated to the fund set up by Gabriela for her husband’s legal costs to challenge his detention and bogus charges. We urge you to do the same: www.gofundme.com/f/migracion-zfvvz. We need to broaden the movement to shut down Delaney Hall, release all the detainees and demand hands off the protesters! No more retaliations against hunger strikers! Drop all the charges!

All out to support the Delaney Hall hunger strikers!