Police arrest dozens outside of Delaney Hall amid ongoing curfew

Police arrested dozens of demonstrators Sunday night during a curfew in the area surrounding the Delaney Hall immigration detention center.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and state officials instituted the curfew on Saturday night, as tensions between protesters and the officers securing the facility continued to rise. Gov. Mikie Sherrill dispatched the State Police to take over external security for ICE. The governor said she made the move to prevent ICE from having a “pretext” to surge into New Jersey with greater numbers.

On Sunday night, the first full night with a curfew, some protesters stayed and were subsequently surrounded by police with a technique known as “kettling.”

“Many protesters complied with the curfew order,” Davenport said. “But a group of individuals who had come to the protest armed with helmets, shields, or gas masks deliberately refused to comply with repeated orders to leave the area and were arrested. Their actions put the public at risk, and I am grateful to law enforcement for de-escalating the situation.”

The curfew bans pedestrians from Doremus Avenue, the road on which Delaney Hall sits, between 9 PM and 6 AM “until further notice.”

The protesters have rebuffed the attorney general’s statement, arguing that gas masks were a necessary precaution after police used pepper spray and tear gas. Ben Dziobek, an organizer present for many of the Delaney Hall protests, said in a social media post that police arrested 46 people — he has said that police escalated tensions, not the protesters.

Krystal Knapp, a journalist and the founder of the Jersey Vindicator, wrote that police used rubber bullets on photojournalists and arrested some journalists. 

The facility has been a focus of protests for more than a year, and tensions rose after reports of a hunger and labor strike within the center over poor living conditions. The confrontation gained national attention when a federal officer shot Senator Andy Kim with a pepper ball while he sought to de-escalate. 

Sherrill has accused out-of-state agitators of stoking unrest.

“To the people coming from out of state to create chaos and dangerous situations, you should not be here,” the governor said during a Saturday afternoon press conference. “You’re not helping the people detained at Delaney Hall, you’re not helping detainee families, and you’re certainly not keeping New Jersey safe.”