Federal ICE agents withdrew from the parking lot of a Newark, New Jersey, detention center after days of escalating violence from demonstrators who hurled rocks, threw a cinder block through a patrol car windshield, and bit three officers badly enough to draw blood.
The retreat from Delaney Hall, a private facility holding immigration detainees, came after Governor Mikie Sherrill intervened, setting up designated protest zones and checkpoints and pressing federal agents to pull back. State officials took over oversight of the demonstrations. The result: federal law enforcement officers, injured in the line of duty, were ordered to cede ground to the mob that attacked them.
That sequence deserves a second look. Officers were assaulted. A protester bit three of them. Another threatened to murder agents and their families. And the official response from New Jersey's governor was to remove the officers, not the agitators.
The clashes began Thursday night, when a protester bit three ICE officers during confrontations outside the facility. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin posted images on X showing the officers' bloody bite marks and announced the attacker had been arrested and charged.
That same Thursday evening, another protester was caught on video threatening ICE agents in terms that left nothing to interpretation. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche later quoted the individual's words: "I'll kill your whole f***ing family... your whole f***ing family is dead."
By Friday, Blanche announced the FBI had arrested the man who made those threats. He posted on X: "Told you. '(The FBI) just arrested the man who threatened to kill ICE officers and their families. FAFO.'" As we previously reported, the federal government moved quickly on that arrest, treating threats against law enforcement families with the seriousness they warrant.
Friday night brought more chaos. Officers deployed smoke grenades and pepper spray to disperse demonstrators. Horse-mounted officers held the perimeter. Authorities made additional arrests, though the exact number has not been released.
By Sunday, a DHS spokesman said roughly 125 protesters had surrounded the facility, many carrying anti-ICE signs and Antifa flags, blocking all entries and exits.
Governor Sherrill, a Democrat, framed the withdrawal of ICE agents as a public safety measure. "We really feel like adding ICE to the situation has made things less safe, and we've seen a surge now in ICE agents coming into the region, which has given us a great deal of concern," she said.
Consider the logic. Federal officers enforcing federal immigration law at a federal detention facility were, in the governor's telling, the problem, not the demonstrators who assaulted them. Sherrill said she wanted to "lower the temperature" and pledged to work "with community members, faith leaders, advocates and state police" to maintain order.
"I am going to protect people's right to protest peacefully and I'm going to ensure everyone's safety, and I'm confident in New Jersey we can do both."
Peaceful protest is a constitutional right. Biting officers, hurling cinder blocks, and threatening to murder federal agents and their children is not. The governor's rhetoric drew no clear line between the two.
She also said the state was "making sure that we give them no pretext for coming in here, clearing out the ability of people to actually raise their concerns." The "them" in that sentence is the federal government. The governor of New Jersey was working to deny federal law enforcement a reason to enforce the law on federal property.
The Trump administration saw it differently. President Trump called the Delaney Hall protesters "paid" and "fake" as the confrontations intensified, signaling that the White House viewed the demonstrations as something other than organic civic engagement.
On Monday, Memorial Day, according to a DHS spokesman, Governor Sherrill and Democratic U.S. Senator Andy Kim, along with members of New Jersey's Democratic congressional delegation, showed up at Delaney Hall demanding answers.
Kim said he was prevented from entering the facility and was hit by pepper balls fired by federal agents at anti-ICE activists. He told NJ.com he had trouble breathing. He also said he had been trying to get agents to stop pointing guns at protesters and to broker a truce that would allow immigration activists to inspect cars leaving the facility.
Kim called for the facility to be "shut down immediately." "What we saw here is unfortunately just what we see all over the country," he said.
DHS pushed back hard. A spokesman called Sherrill's visit "nothing more than a political stunt on Memorial Day when visitation is currently suspended due to riots outside the facility." The spokesman confirmed Kim was eventually allowed inside for congressional oversight, a detail that complicates the narrative of a senator locked out and tear-gassed by a rogue federal agency.
The protests were triggered in part by reports that up to 300 detainees at Delaney Hall had gone on a hunger strike over the prior week. Detainees alleged mistreatment and poor conditions, with external reporting referencing claims of maggot-infested food, crowded rooms without air conditioning, and immigration cases ignored by federal judges. Some detainees had reportedly been held for a year.
DHS disputed those characterizations directly. "All detainees are provided with three meals a day, clean water, clothing, bedding, showers, soap and toiletries," a spokesman said, adding that dietitians evaluate meals. The spokesman also stated that detainees receive "comprehensive medical care from the moment an alien enters ICE custody," including medical, dental, and mental health services.
"For many illegal aliens, this is the best healthcare they have received their entire lives."
Whether conditions inside Delaney Hall meet legal standards is a legitimate question. But the answer to that question does not come from a mob throwing rocks at federal officers. It comes from inspections, oversight, and, if warranted, litigation. The fact that a sitting U.S. senator chose to wade into the middle of an active confrontation rather than pursue those channels tells you something about priorities.
DHS Secretary Mullin made the administration's position clear. "The Trump Administration will ALWAYS stand with our federal law enforcement officers," he wrote. "Anyone who assaults a law enforcement officer will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."
Acting Attorney General Blanche pledged to find and prosecute the agitator who threatened ICE families, telling the Will Cain Show he would follow through, and did, with the FBI arrest coming the same night.
That stands in sharp contrast to the state-level response. Sherrill established protest zones. She asked ICE to leave. She spoke of "lowering the temperature." At no point, in any statement captured in the reporting, did she call the assaults on federal officers unacceptable in the same unequivocal terms she used to describe the situation as "unsafe."
The contrast is worth noting in a broader context. The Biden administration's former DHS Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, has since admitted his team should have moved faster on border security, a belated acknowledgment that years of permissive signals carry real consequences. The scenes at Delaney Hall are downstream of a political culture that spent years treating immigration enforcement as inherently suspect.
Officials said protests were scheduled to continue Saturday, with law enforcement maintaining a presence to keep agitators under control. The exact number of arrests from Friday night's clashes remains unreleased. The identities of the protester who bit three officers and the one who threatened agents' families have not been publicly disclosed.
Several questions remain open. Why was Governor Sherrill denied entry to Delaney Hall? Were the pepper balls that struck Senator Kim aimed at him or at nearby activists? And what, precisely, is the legal basis for a state governor to direct federal agents to vacate a federal facility's perimeter?
Those questions matter. But the broader picture is already clear enough. Federal officers doing their jobs were attacked, injured, and threatened with murder. The state's response was to remove the officers and accommodate the crowd. The federal government arrested the people who committed the violence.
One approach treats law enforcement as the problem. The other treats lawbreaking as the problem. Voters can decide which one makes sense.
