“These free human beings of planet Earth need to be liberated”: An Interview with a Delaney Hall Frontliner
Republished From Perilous Chronicle
In response to a hunger strike and labor strike inside an immigrant detention center in Newark, New Jersey called Delaney Hall, hundreds have gathered outside the facility, providing material support to the resistance within by blocking ICE vehicles coming in and out of the jail. Rebels outside have showed remarkable courage in facing down lines of ICE agents, taking blows and faces full of pepper spray and coming right back to hold the line.
A similar event took place at Delaney Hall almost exactly one year ago. Together, these events stand out in the historical record as extremely rare, and perhaps even unprecedented in the contemporary era, instances of resistance inside being met with simultaneous insurgency outside the facility. They reveal an immediately actionable abolitionist praxis in the face of ascendent fascism.
We were lucky enough to get to talk to someone fresh off the front lines at Delaney Hall as they were heading home still exhausted from the battle with flailing ICE agents desperate to maintain their fragile order. The following interview was a collaboration between Perilous Chronicle and Living & Fighting.
Perilous Chronicle: What is Delaney Hall and what’s been going on there this week?
Anonymous: Delaney Hall is down an the industrial area of Newark, New Jersey. It’s part of an ongoing federal plan to build a network of concentration camps for mass deportation efforts and civil disobedience control.
This particular facility, Delaney, is privately run by Geo Group and they are directly profiting from the immiseration and suffering of these people under torturous conditions where there has been fetid, maggoty food, there have been regular beatings and violence beyond the initial incarceration, beyond the abductions. There has been no medical care for those with chronic illness and people, especially children and elderly people, have fallen ill as a result of the horrid conditions inside. Bathrooms that are unfit for human use, fluorescent lighting and insufficient bedding, people sleeping on hard floors. And so the people incarcerated in this concentration camp have come together to hunger strike and labor strike for their freedom and for the basic human dignity that is the birthright of every person.
And then the people outside are standing in solidarity with the folks inside. It’s very clear to those of us in the struggle that the mass incarceration of human beings is unacceptable. It’s a crime against humanity. It’s an affront to everything humane and upright.
Perilous: What your involvement’s been like?
A: I learned about the hunger strike slash labor strike through the kind of decentralized web of activists and anarchists and learned about the context for what was happening and decided that I needed to be there in solidarity. I think that if you’ve got clear moral vision for the world and some human compassion, you can’t help but come to the side of anyone standing against the empire and standing for human dignity.
And so my involvement up to this point has been entirely on the ground, showing up to protect comrades through de-arrest and through medical support and standing on front lines linked other comrades ready to hold the line against ICE as they try to get vehicles through. They were trying to transfer the hunger strikers from Delaney to another facility nearby to quash the resistance and to demoralize those who were participating. But that seems to have failed and the numbers have grown each night as more and more people become aware. We have succeeded in temporarily halting the movement in and out of the facility. People were able to block the road with debris and cause traffic jams. Comrades were able to directly put their bodies in front of the line of ICE Gestapo and in front of their vehicles to stop them from coming in and out.
But ultimately the fact that the state has sent so many well-armed, well-equipped thugs to put down this peaceful protest means that when they make the call and when they charge the line, there’s very little that we as unarmed people can do to resist that. I mean, other than just hold up our shields and hold the line and stay linked and push back. But they’ve been deploying less lethal munitions. They’ve been tasing people pepper spraying, pepper balling, beating people with batons and their fists and their boots, even pushing people under vehicles. So far there have been a few arrests and a couple of major injuries.
Perilous: When did you first become aware that people were gathering outside the facility?
A: I first became aware over the weekend. I believe it was Sunday [May 24, 2026] during the afternoon. And I knew that there was gonna be a need for more people and that as someone of a political consciousness for resisting empire and for bringing about the society of the children through the revolution of the heart, we have to go there and be there in numbers to actually fight and not just allow the liberal peace police to show up and essentially co-opt the efforts and momentum of the movement toward some milquetoast electoral reform policy.
When Andy Kim was there and the liberal mainstream were there, they’re talking about things like, “oh, we need to have meetings with elected officials. We need to have not-fetid food and not unusable, inhumane bathrooms.” Those are less than the minimum of what is acceptable. These free human beings of planet Earth need to be liberated.
Perilous: Can you tell us more about the barricades? Where specifically are people building them? What are they building out of them out of? How long have they been up? Are they getting torn down and then rebuilt?
A: Yeah, so they are being built up and then torn down. The big barricade was put up, I believe, on Monday or Tuesday. And then by the time I got out there last night, it had been bulldozed. It was composed of all kinds of things: wooden palettes, plastic traffic barriers, and a lot of 25-pound paver stones taken from the ICE facility front lawn, the retaining wall for their yard. Which I thought was cool, fuck their landscape.
Perilous: And so people have this barricade and then they’re positioning themselves behind the barricade, is that correct?
A: Yeah, so there have been some more temporary, minimalist barricades, just of debris, so as to stop vehicle traffic on the street that the concentration camp is on. And then there was a more semi-permanent barricade a couple of days ago that was composed of things that I mentioned, that people were able to stand behind. But in the days since that that’s been cleared, there have been direct, violent confrontations between the stormtroopers and the people standing in solidarity.
Just kind of as a note for the historical record is that while the people have done an extraordinarily fine job and disciplined job and resisting the state thugs directly, there is an ongoing working out of how to deal with press that want to be right on the front line and in the way. We’re trying to hold a line and prevent the movement of vehicles and the press is totally disorganized. They’re standing between protesters and ICE and they’re creating a more dangerous situation for everyone involved. Just by being undisciplined and not allowing us to do what we need to.
Perilous: About how many people would you say are out there or have been out there?
A: It’s been up and down numbers wise. It seems to have been increasing over the last few days. I would say that the highest number that I saw last night [Wednesday, May 27, 2026] seemed to peak at around 100 with maybe half or 60% of those people having shown up with personal protective equipment and shields, ready to throw down.
Perilous: And so in addition to blocking the driveway of the facility, people are also blocking the road in front of the facility?
A: That’s correct. I believe that was a new development as of Wednesday night: an attempt to cause a traffic jam so that even if the ICE thugs could break our line, they still couldn’t get their vehicles out in a timely fashion. Strategically, tactically, a lot of it is delay and impede rather than stop entirely. With the numbers that we have and with the munitions available to both sides, it’s not feasible to have a direct full force confrontation. So we’re picking strategic battles and doing the utmost to delay.
Perilous: You’re describing that some of the people who have shown up appear to be already skilled in confrontations like this. Maybe some of this is learned organically or in the moment, but others seem to show up with shields, ready to go. Do you have any idea where this learning process has occurred or if this movement is being fed from the history of other recent movements? Any lineages you can draw that you sense happening there?
A: Oh, absolutely. I mean, just within my very narrow and short period of political consciousness, you can see major influences and learnings and teachings from those involved in the Black Lives Matter struggles, those from the Atlanta Stop Cop City struggle, those from Standing Rock. There were Indigenous folks out there, those from the Palestine Solidarity/anti-zionist movement who have a lot of experience fighting and taking on cops directly. So yeah, I mean, the empire has been violently repressing social movements for hundreds of years. And I think that the consciousness that has developed around what must be done to resist the empire and to build something in its place has only grown, especially over the last 60 years since the Civil Rights movements and the Black Power movement. Yeah, these young people in the hundreds of thousands see themselves as directly opposed to the empire. They have no allegiance to any flag and they’re willing to fight on those grounds with what they’ve learned from forest defense and land defense and water defense and anti-carceral and anti-police struggle. It’s really cool to see.
Perilous: Do we know anything about what’s going on inside the facility right now?
A: I think as of today, I saw on Democracy Now! that one of the individuals who first started the hunger strike has been moved to a facility in Elizabeth [New Jersey]. And we know that the labor strike and the hunger strike are ongoing. Every night, the people detained there have been flashing their lights and appearing as silhouettes in front of the windows, letting the people outside know that they’re there and that they can perceive that something is happening outside. And so the people outside then can get real loud and hopefully reach the ears of the people inside. But yeah, just more of the same abuses and crimes against humanity that have been going on for quite some time are still happening as we speak.
Perilous: What do you foresee happening moving forward? Does anyone have a sense of where this standoff is going to lead?
A: Well, I think my hope is that, as the days go on, a critical mass will be reached such that it becomes impossible for the number of ICE that they have at the facility to break the line and to get vehicles in and out. Ideally, the facility is stormed and the people are liberated, but what’s likely to happen, I won’t speak into existence, you know?
For every facility that joins the effort, for every population that comes out to fight and to resist the fascists, the better our odds grow, because as we’ve seen from protest movements internationally, especially in Hong Kong, we know that having decentralized pockets of resistance is more effective and that it’s impossible then to mobilize sufficient forces at each of the requisite battlefields or scenes of engagement. So I would just want readers to know that even if it feels like your small community can’t field a full-on on resistance, perhaps you can distract or draw forces from a major conflict that’s happening elsewhere.
Perilous: Are there any other stories you wanna tell about what you saw?
A: I will say that the overwhelming feeling of love and solidarity between the people that have shown up is just such a beautiful thing to witness. Everyone there is dedicated to keeping one another safe in the face of such violence and repression. Folks have thrown their own bodies between the fascists and their comrades to protect them. Folks have jumped in with shields to protect or to de-arrest their comrades. And what’s more, when I witnessed the kind of tactics that the people are using versus the tactics that ICE is using, it’s so clear that they don’t have the same kind of stick-to-it-iveness, stick-togetherness that we do. They aren’t looking out for one another in the same way. They’re breaking their lines to pursue individual personal vendettas and rage. They’re wild-eyed. They’re clearly very fearful and the people have remained stalwart and disciplined in the face of that.
Photo Credit: AP Photo/Andres Kudacki
#Antifascist #general #ICE #news #PrisonSupportPrisonAbolition #reportBack #Republished #solidarity
jerseycounterinfo
Defector | The last good website. [Unofficial]
