On May 12, a handwritten letter composed by detainees at Newark’s Delaney Hall, one of the dozens of Trump’s concentration camps around the U.S., was released to the public The letter had been handed by inmates to a family member who had visited them inside. In the respectful yet powerful letter, approximately 300 prisoners describe being “tortured physically and psychologically” since their freedom was ripped away from them, in many cases months ago.
On May 22, families of some of the detainees held a rally outside the detention center to denounce the terrible conditions inside. At that rally, while speaking through a cell phone and into a megaphone, detainees announced that they were beginning a hunger and labor strike to win their freedom. In the days following, it is believed that some of the organizers of the letter were transferred to different facilities, and ICE officers beefed up their presence around the facility, in full tactical gear and ready for violence, as has become the norm.
Since then, nightly vigils by family members and community and immigrant rights groups have turned into energetic protests against ICE and CBP (Customs and Border Protection), the attacks on immigrants, and the prison system itself. Democratic Party politicians have shown up to criticize ICE and the Trump administration, but have now joined in helping to repress the protests. After ICE agents beat protesters early on Friday, the New Jersey State Police, under the control of Democratic Governor Mikie Sherrill, took over the role of securing the area outside of the detention center. Both the Governor and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka have agreed on a curfew in the area from 9pm until 6am daily, in effect using state and Newark police to do ICE’s job for them – another reminder that we can’t trust the Democratic Party to fight our battles for us.
This standoff in Newark shows once again how cruelty and dehumanization of working-class immigrants and their families is a core part of the system. Even when detainees don’t actually die in ICE or CBP custody, they nonetheless experience a form of torture that violates and traumatizes them and their families.
It also shows that ICE’s cruel practices haven’t ended or really even slowed down. It may seem to some that, since the massive protests and ICE drawdown in Minneapolis, ICE and CBP have slowed down or stopped their sickening practices. But they haven’t. They have simply learned to be less flagrant and celebratory about their violence. But this conflict in Newark reminds us that ICE and CBP are continuing their reign of terror. Newark is just the flash point in the news at the moment that reflects the reality for hundreds of thousands of other working people who have lost their freedom to Trump’s criminal, racist, and xenophobic regime.
We need to continue to resist the cruel and inhumane attacks on working and poor people by the Trump administration and its thugs in ICE and CBP. They will only continue and expand unless we stop them.
The resistance may come from the streets and entire neighborhoods and whole cities, as it did in Minneapolis a few months ago. It may come from inside of detention facilities, as it began to do in Dilly, Texas in January, or has happened recently in Newark.
But it will without question take larger numbers of us organizing and hitting the streets to begin to turn the tide. And to do that we’ll have to conduct mass demonstrations, maybe strikes at our workplaces, and maybe even blockades of ICE and CBP facilities in order to make it impossible for them to function.
This will take real effort and work. But nobody and no political party will fight our battles for us. We need to organize and take action ourselves.
