Dozens of protesters blocked entrances to Delaney Hall, a massive ICE detention facility in Newark, for hours Sunday evening after word spread that guards were trying to move a detainee involved in an ongoing work and hunger strike.
The detainee, Martin Soto, was among those who announced the strike on Friday, calling for the immediate release of medically vulnerable detainees, among other demands.
His wife, Gabriela Soto, 28, has also been organizing protests outside the facility.
The commotion erupted Sunday afternoon as Gabriela, a U.S. citizen who is several months pregnant, attempted to visit her husband.
As she was waiting in line to enter the facility, she saw a man being shoved into a van. Other visitors who were closer to the vehicle told her it was her husband, and she ran towards it.
“I was banging on the door of the van,” she said. “I was not letting that happen.”
Attorneys for Martin Soto had earlier filed a habeas corpus petition in New Jersey seeking his release, a claim that could be upended by a transfer to another jurisdiction.
Other protesters joined Gabriela and formed a blockade at the gates of Delaney Hall for hours late into Sunday night to try to prevent Martin from being removed.
“Free Martin,” she and the crowd chanted. “Free them all.”
As the sun went down, the silhouettes of detainees could be seen banging on barred windows in time with the droves of chanting protesters below.
A spokesperson for ICE didn’t return a request for comment on the protest or their alleged effort to transfer Soto.
Christopher Ferreira, a spokesperson for the GEO Group, which runs Delaney Hall, declined to comment on the specifics of Sunday’s protest, deferring to ICE.
“We are proud of the role our company has played for 40 years to support the law enforcement mission of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),” he said in an emailed statement that touted the “around-the-clock access to medical care, in-person and virtual legal and family visitation, general and legal library access, translation services, dietician-approved meals.”
Lauren Herman, the legal director of Make the Road New Jersey later confirmed that attorneys had been in contact with the U.S. Attorney’s office, which promised Soto would not be moved that day due to a standing federal judge’s order barring his transfer out of New Jersey while his habeas corpus petition is pending.
The New Jersey’s U.S. Attorney’s office didn’t return a request for comment right away.
Sunday marked the third day of the hunger and work strike by Delaney Hall detainees, who are demanding the immediate release of the young, the elderly and medically vulnerable people. The strike kicked off Friday as protesters rallied outside Delaney Hall, and several detainees called their family members to announce their effort inside.
The strike followed a series of letters signed by 300 detainees about poor conditions, lack of medical care and other concerns at Delaney Hall, which opened just over a year ago and is the largest detention facility in the New York metro area.
Gabriela Soto, who has stayed outside Delaney Hall since the strike began, said that starting Friday guards locked her husband in a cell for eight hours and questioned him and his wife’s advocacy.
“‘If we release you now, will you tell your wife to stop this protest? Did you know that your wife was organizing this protest? He said no comment,’” Soto told THE CITY, adding that guards had asked her husband, “‘Are you the one organizing the strike inside?’”
Soto said her husband was arrested by ICE in Kearny, New Jersey several months earlier, when he had gone out to get diapers for their younger child. She is a U.S. citizen originally from Peru, and the couple had been together for a decade, she said.
Some family members of people detained inside Delaney Hall joined the protesters Sunday night. Among those was Erica, a mother whose 18-year-old daughter had been arrested by ICE when she went to visit a friend at an ICE detention facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Guards never let her daughter leave, Erica told THE CITY.
Erica declined to give her full name out of concern about retaliation against her and her daughter.
“One month and three weeks locked up unjustly,” Erica told THE CITY in Spanish. “My daughter is still in high school. Friday she had prom. She had her prom, and instead she was locked in here like a criminal.”
“I’m afraid for her life,” Erica said. “She shouldn’t be in there for more time. Not her or anyone else.”
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