The War at Home: The Second Battle of Newark

 

 

By New Jersey Correspondent Ernestine G. Carey with Immigration Editor Emma Goldman

NEWARK – The same masked federally-deputized desperadoes who brought death and destruction to Minneapolis last winter have been redeployed to Newark, N.J.  As expected, chaos followed.

The violence followed increasingly desperate efforts by the detainees of Delaney Hall, a privately-run concentration camp bought and paid for by the Mad King's body snatchers, to attract attention to their suffering, caused by the intentional denial of due process, food, and medical care to these detainees.

If you came in late, and apparently all of you did, none of the incarcerated wretches of Delaney Hall are imprisoned as punishment for crimes of which they have been found guilty.  Everyone is there because of the Mad King's vicious and bigoted efforts to torment persons seeking immigration status in the United States through various pathways established by federal law.

The NJ State Police is aiming for...peace

In a free society, locking people up except as punishment for crimes has been traditionally frowned upon.  In the case of immigrants without or seeking status, detention is authorized only in narrow categories: (1) the detainee is a danger to public safety (like criminal bail), (2) the detainee is a flight risk, (3) the detainee is about to be deported following a removal order or (4) the detainee entered without inspection and was arrested shortly thereafter.

That's it.  That's the list. 

Not a legal basis for detention: tormenting detainees into abandoning their claims for immigration relief.  How could it?  That would be plainly constitutional, or at least it was prior to the 2017-20 packing of the Supreme Court by bent Republicans. 

Which brings us to Delaney Hall, a dismal institution in a grim corner of Newark [What other kinds of corners does Newark have? – Ed.].  Immured inside are 1,000 desperate souls, according to Rep. Rob Menendez, who has toured the lager on multiple occasions:

“There’s no criminals in there,” Menendez said. “You have a daughter who should have been graduating high school. You have a pregnant woman in there. You have a woman who suffered a miscarriage in there. You have fathers, grandfathers, mothers, grandmothers. That’s who ICE is holding in Delaney Hall right now.”  

Good thing these monsters haven't been turned loose to wreak havoc on the quiet peaceful streets of Newark. 

The terrible conditions both in Delaney Hall and in the travesty of justice that constitutes the immigration process, including claims to be released from detention, have also been cited in a letter signed by New Jersey's Senators and six of its Representatives. 

The victims, to call attention to their unbearable plight, began a hunger strike.  According to independent journalist Marisa Kabas, the Mad King's storm troopers responded the only way they know how –  with violence:

Now we’ve learned that ICE agents within Delaney have begun physically retaliating against the hunger strikers: Outside in clear view of cameras, they’ve taken to physically attacking protesters and journalists, pushing one into the wheel of a moving truck and smashing a camera. What’s emerged in Newark is a new front in the battle against Donald Trump’s vicious and deadly immigration policy, and a strong sign that the campaign to abolish and prosecute ICE is alive and well.  

Those interested in human rights have been protesting the outrages at Delaney Hall for years.  But the news of the hunger strike and its brutal suppression brought out a new wave of protests.  As in Minneapolis, those too have been met with state-sponsored violence perpetrated by masked anonymous goon squads, including gassing and spraying New Jersey Senator Andy Kim:

The surge of ICE violence against protesters in the street and detainees trapped inside prompted  calls, including by this publication, for New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill to deploy the New Jersey State Police to protect New Jerseyans.

It was another lesson in being careful what you wish for.  The Governor deployed the State Police not to protect the protesters but to roust them with violence and gas:

It was absolutely necessary to shoot the protesters with pepper balls for their safety

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— Marisa Kabas (@marisakabas.bsky.social) May 30, 2026 at 1:34 PM

 It reminded us of the old explanations American military brass gave for wanton destruction of civilian lives in Vietnam: “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”

Based on her actions, it appears that Gov. Sherrill was less interested in protecting the civil rights of her state's residents than she was in “lowering the temperature.”  It seems that she was worried that if the State Police acted to protect protesters from ICE attack, the Mad King's goons would respond with the kind of brute force they unleashed on Minneapolis.

We have a suggestion for Gov. Sherrill.  You can't appease a sadistic bully by beating up on his victims yourself.  That only incites them.  And it's not the fault of the victims both inside and outside the walls of Delaney Hall.  Thinking that you can help your people by doing the dirty work yourself was the rationalization employed by the Judenraten of occupied Eastern Europe.  It did not go well for the Jews. 

Her explanation for intervening decisively on the side of the bad guys was simple and sad: 

“I will not give ICE the pretext to expand operations in our state,” Ms. Sherrill said during a news conference. “Our top priority is public safety, and we need to take this opportunity to lower the temperature now.” 

Gov. Sherrill may have forgotten that the only pretext ICE found necessary to begin their violent rampage in Minneapolis was a fake video about day care centers.

As for lowering the temperature, she's echoing the white “moderate” reaction to the civil rights protests of the 1960's, some of which included violations of law (like sitting in at a lunch counter or refusing to give up a seat on a city bus).  Back then, those lovable moderates argued that if Black people continued to protest violations of civil rights, Bull Connor will sic the fire hoses and police dogs on innocent civilians.

Given the choice between standing up for justice and the supposed need for peace and tranquillity, Gov. Sherrill chose peace and tranquillity.

So far it's not working:

Good to see @velshi.com out there. This is fucking crazy.

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— Marisa Kabas (@marisakabas.bsky.social) May 30, 2026 at 11:29 PM

Even more fundamentally, the white moderates of New Jersey have lost the plot. The real problem here is not unarmed protesters at an ICE detention center; it's the ongoing crime against humanity represented by that detention center.  So far nothing concrete has been done, either through legal action or something simpler (like ordering the power cut) to protect the helpless and tormented victims of the body snatchers, acting on orders from a corrupt demented bigot.

Perhaps Gov. Sherrill was intimidated by DHS Secretary Markwayne “Boom-boom” Mullin, who once challenged a union leader to a fistfight during a Senate hearing.

Now Punchy is proposing to retaliate against places like New Jersey by closing down the CBP inspections that allow international arriving passengers to enter the country at Newark Airport.  That would mean that the 700,000 or so passengers arriving each month at Newark Airport from overseas would be rerouted to Red State hubs like Casper International Airport, seen here:

The airport boasts a 10,000-foot runway, so moving all international flights from Newark to Casper, Wyoming should work out fine. 

A reminder that this isn't the first time that Newark chose to confront civil rights protests with excessive force.  No one remembers the 1967 Newark riots protesting generations of racist policing and other government interventions.  At the time all good white people clamored for peace and tranquillity.

The verdict of history, not for use in Florida schools, is different:

Many Americans blamed the riots on outside agitators or young black men, who represented the largest and most visible group of rioters. But, in March 1968, the Kerner Commission turned those assumptions upside-down, declaring white racism—not black anger—turned the key that unlocked urban American turmoil.

Bad policing practices, a flawed justice system, unscrupulous consumer credit practices, poor or inadequate housing, high unemployment, voter suppression, and other culturally embedded forms of racial discrimination all converged to propel violent upheaval on the streets of African-American neighborhoods in American cities, north and south, east and west. And as black unrest arose, inadequately trained police officers and National Guard troops entered affected neighborhoods, often worsening the violence.  

As Tom Lehrer used to say about defeating Germany in 1918, “that couldn't happen again.”

But it can, and as long as supposed white moderates like Gov. Sherrill abandon their supposed commitment to civil rights and the rule of law as soon as the going gets tough, it will happen again.

Like the illegally detained victims of the Mad King's bigotry locked up in Delaney Hall without edible food, we're hungry for something better.