On Memorial Day, federal ICE agents at the Delaney Hall detention center in Newark pepper sprayed a sitting United States senator. About 300 detainees inside the GEO Group facility have been on a hunger strike since Friday over worm-riddled food, undrinkable water, and overcrowded rooms with no air conditioning. Earlier that morning, ICE had also denied New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill entry to the building, telling the first sitting governor to attempt oversight that she could not come inside.
A Sitting Senator, Then a Sitting Governor
Senator Andy Kim, Democrat of New Jersey, went to Delaney Hall on Monday to look into the hunger strike. He spoke with families outside and tried to broker an agreement between protesters and federal agents who said they were preparing to push armored vehicles through the crowd. According to Kim's own account on X, ICE responded by deploying an armored vehicle and a line of armed agents who fired pepper balls and chemical spray into the crowd, including at him.
Volunteers poured water into the senator's eyes while he held an ice pack against his face. Kim said he had trouble breathing.
"What I witnessed and experienced today was shameful. Delaney Hall is a failure. It's this administration's failure. The only way to make this right for our communities is to shut it down."
Senator Andy Kim (D-NJ)
Governor Sherrill's request for access had been denied earlier in the day. She is the first sitting governor to attempt to inspect Delaney Hall, and ICE turned her away twice, first that morning by formal denial and again when she arrived on site. She spoke to one detainee inside through a video call before being forced to leave. "They don't want oversight or accountability," she told reporters.
What the Detainees Are Protesting
Workers and detainees inside Delaney Hall launched the hunger and labor strike on Friday, May 22. The list of complaints documented by Kim and a delegation of Democratic lawmakers includes meals containing live worms, contaminated drinking water, overcrowded rooms with no air conditioning, and weeks-long delays for basic medical care. Kim said one detainee was a pregnant woman not receiving prenatal care, and one had suffered a miscarriage without medical attention.
The facility, operated by GEO Group, has the capacity to hold 1,000 detainees under a federal contract worth roughly $1 billion over 15 years. It reopened as an ICE detention center in May 2025. In December, a 41-year-old Haitian man named Jean Wilson Brutus died at the facility one day after ICE agents seized him. In June 2025, four detainees escaped during what officials called an "uprising" over conditions.
The city of Newark sued GEO Group in April 2025 for opening the facility without the required city permits and inspections. A federal judge has since ordered both sides into mediation with a June 15 deadline.
The Pattern Around Oversight
Trump's deportation apparatus has answered legitimate congressional and state oversight with force before. Members of Congress have been arrested, shoved, or denied entry at detention centers in California, Illinois, and Texas in the months since DHS Secretary Kristi Noem took office. Andy Kim is the first sitting United States senator to be pepper-sprayed by ICE. Mikie Sherrill is the first sitting governor to be barred from a federal immigration jail inside her own state.
DHS Calls It a "Political Stunt"
DHS leadership called the day's events a "political stunt" by Democrats. The department has not explained how three hundred people refusing food for four days, a senator with chemical burns in his eyes, and a governor locked out of a facility she has standing to inspect amount to political theater. The Department also has not addressed the specific medical complaints from the detainees Kim spoke with.
Kim has filed two bills aimed directly at the apparatus that produced Memorial Day at Delaney Hall: the ICE Funding Accountability Act and the Private Detention Accountability Act. Whether either gets a vote in this Republican Senate is a separate question. What happened on Memorial Day is now part of the public record: a federal agency pepper-sprayed a US senator and barred a US governor from a privately operated jail where 300 people have refused food for four days.
Sources
- Senator Andy Kim official press release: "I'm not voting to fund this lawless violence" (kim.senate.gov)
- Statement by Governor Sherrill on Visit to Delaney Hall (nj.gov)
- Andy Kim pepper sprayed at protest outside ICE detention facility in Newark (The Hill)
- Delaney Hall: ICE facility hunger strike leads to protests in New Jersey (CNN)
- What to Know About Protests at New Jersey ICE Facility (Time)
- Delaney Hall ICE protests escalate after Sherrill denied access (CBS New York)
- NJ senator pepper sprayed outside Delaney Hall (Gothamist)
- "What I Witnessed and Experienced Today Was Shameful" (Common Dreams)
- ICE Agents Pepper-Spray Democratic Senator (The New Republic)
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