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Bystanders hailed as 'heroic' after intervening in brutal knife attack by Sudanese migrant in UK

A man in his 40s was hospitalized with serious injuries after a brutal knife attack in Northern Ireland, as police arrested a Sudanese migrant on suspicion of attempted murder. 

The attack happened shortly after 10:30 p.m. Monday in north Belfast, according to the Police Service of Northern Ireland. The victim suffered serious injuries to his face, neck, back and eyes, while police said they recovered what they believe was a kitchen knife at the scene.

WAVE OF ALLEGED MIGRANT MURDERS IGNITES FURY ACROSS US AS OFFICIALS WARN OF MORE CARNAGE, CRACKDOWN NEEDED

Video circulating online appeared to show members of the public confronting the attacker, including one person wielding a hurling stick. PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Ryan Henderson praised the bystanders as "heroic," saying their intervention helped save the victim’s life, according to the BBC.

Police initially said the suspect was Somali but later corrected that he is believed to be Sudanese, describing the change as part of a "fast-time investigation." Henderson said police understand the suspect came into Northern Ireland from Dublin, Ireland and had been granted leave to remain, though he said the Home Office would provide further clarity on his status.

On Monday evening, protesters burned down a bus as tensions rose in Belfast following the gruesome stabbing, despite earlier calls from authorities for calm.

"At this stage, we have no information to suggest that this was a terrorist-related incident," Henderson said, while stressing that the investigation remains in its early stages. "However, I must stress, we are still at the early stages of our investigation," he said, according to The Sun.

Alan Mendoza, executive director of the Henry Jackson Society, told Fox News Digital that the attack exposed what he described as failures in Britain’s immigration system.

"Britain’s broken border and migration system has been put into stark relief once more with this tragic — and entirely avoidable — case," Mendoza said. "This man should never ever have been in the U.K., let alone been granted ‘leave to remain.’ The Irish border is the soft underbelly for a process the British public has long since lost confidence in, as well as in those administering it politically. Nothing short of a revolution in who we allow into the U.K. and how will satisfy a people fed up with false promises about immigration change."

ILLEGAL ALIEN MURDER SUSPECT AVOIDED SYSTEM AS ICE PUSHES DEM GOVERNOR TO KEEP HIM LOCKED UP

The swift response from Prime Minister Keir Starmer marked a notable contrast with the case of Henry Nowak, an 18-year-old who was stabbed and then handcuffed by police after his attacker accused him of making racist remarks. Starmer faced criticism from some conservatives over his response to that case.

Starmer quickly posted on X that the attack was "sickening," adding: "I have absolutely no tolerance for abhorrent scenes of violence like this on our streets." He said his thoughts were with the victim and thanked first responders, including members of the public who intervened.

The attack prompted political reaction across the U.K. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage called on authorities to reveal the suspect’s identity and immigration status.

"What happened in Belfast last night is horrific. The authorities must reveal the identity and status of the attacker immediately. The public are entitled to the truth," Farage wrote on X.

FARAGE SLAMS SECRET AFGHAN REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT TO UK, CLAIMS SEX OFFENDERS AMONG ARRIVALS

Robert Jenrick also wrote on X: "We’ve woken up to truly barbaric footage on a street in Belfast. Of a kind you’d think you’d never see in this country. For years now I’ve urged the police to spell out the basic, sober facts, as they have them, when there are horrors like this."

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said people would ask whether there had been "failings around our borders," according to GB News.

Northern Ireland’s main political parties issued a joint statement condemning the violence and urging the public not to share graphic footage of the attack.

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"There is no place in our society for this kind of brutality. Our immediate thoughts are with the victim and his family, and we hope he makes a full and complete recovery," the parties said, according to GB News.

Police said they had declared a critical incident and would increase their presence across Northern Ireland amid calls for protests. Officials urged calm and asked the public to allow the investigation to proceed.

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Why officials in the U.K. are accusing JD Vance of trying to ‘interfere in our democracy’

In an English port city late last year, Vickrum Digwa stabbed and killed Henry Nowak, and by any fair measure, it was a brutal crime. Digwa was arrested, charged, convicted of murder and, as of last week, sentenced to life in prison.

Complicating matters, however, was the initial police response. When officers first arrived, the murderer falsely claimed to be a victim of a hate crime, and a video of what transpired showed the police temporarily putting the actual victim in handcuffs for about a minute. Officers then realized that Nowak had been stabbed and began administering first aid, but given the severity of the attack, he did not survive.

Because the attacker was Sikh and the victim was white, prominent British voices eager to stir racist animus have seized on the crime. As of late last week, JD Vance decided to weigh in, too.

In a three-paragraph statement posted to social media, the Republican vice president described the murder as “enraging” and blamed “European elites” for failing to stand against “the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants.”

The Ohio Republican went on to write, “It is because we love the West that we want to preserve it. We love our civilization. We love our country. We love our children. And nobody — nobody — should ever die the way that Henry Nowak died.”

Vance, whose wife is a Hindu Indian American, neglected to elaborate as to who counts as “we.”

What’s more, the American vice president also neglected to mention the inconvenient fact that the convicted murderer isn’t an immigrant: He’s British-born and -raised.

With this in mind, officials in the U.K., already dealing with domestic political voices that appear eager to stoke racial fires, have made their dissatisfaction with Vance known. The New York Times reported:

Mr. Vance’s intervention has been met with a fierce response by British government officials, who noted that Mr. Digwa was not an immigrant. A spokesman for Prime Minister Keir Starmer accused Mr. Vance of trying to “interfere in our democracy and seeking to stir up division on our streets.” […]

Over the weekend, David Lammy, the deputy prime minister, who has in the past talked of a friendship with Mr. Vance over their shared Christian faith, said he had called the vice president to express his disagreement.

“I told him he was wrong: This has got nothing to do with mass migration,” Lammy told the BBC. Lammy added that he made clear to Vance that his intervention in the matter was “not helpful.”

For his part, Mark Nowak, the victim’s father, criticized the police’s initial response but also said the family did “not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension.”

With this in mind, the British prime minister told lawmakers, “Exploiting this tragedy to create grievance and division would be wrong in any circumstances. But to do it when the family is expressly saying please do not is unforgivable.”

Whether Vance cares about such pushback remains to be seen.

The post Why officials in the U.K. are accusing JD Vance of trying to ‘interfere in our democracy’ appeared first on MS NOW.

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When ‘BeKind’ Protesters Were Invited to Join a Clap to Remember Henry Nowak Their Nasty Core Was Revealed

When 'BeKind' counter-protesters in Crowborough were invited by protesters against the town's migrant camp to join in a clap to remember Henry Nowak their nasty core was revealed, says Madeleine Gillies.

The post When ‘BeKind’ Protesters Were Invited to Join a Clap to Remember Henry Nowak Their Nasty Core Was Revealed appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

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Teens making drones: Russia’s demographic collapse

My name is Darina,” says an elfin teen, ponytail pulled through the back of her cap, and “next year I’ll be earning 150,000 rubles (nearly $2,000) a month.” Darina works at what she calls “the world’s largest drone factory,” helping to assemble versions of the Iranian Shahed drone. “My parents are proud of me. Wanna do the same?” She asks as she advertises a polytechnic in Tatarstan. The Russian government, in the face of war and looming demographic disaster, has been relaxing child labor laws since 2022, making it easier to put 14-year-olds to work. Now, legislators are open about the need to reform “outdated” restrictions on employing minors in industries that were “considered dangerous 20 years ago.” Drone production is not the only part of the war effort to which teenagers are being recruited. This month in a “content camp” in Moscow, soldiers and state media propagandists trained 120-plus teens on how to make videos, use AI, and grow their audiences as aspiring influencers. Vladislav Golovin, a former soldier and a leader of Russia’s Young Army Cadets National Movement, said the program had “created a huge team of kids who understand how to broadcast government values.” 

But many young people, subject to year-round conscription, subject to internet shut downs and subject to surveillance, have little desire to spread propaganda. Instead, according to Google Trends data, growing numbers of Russians are seeking information on how to emigrate. A new exodus would accelerate Russia’s deep demographic crisis. Already, up to a million people are thought to have left Russia since the full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. According to one recent count, nearly 210,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in the war with Ukraine, with other estimates suggesting over 1.2 million casualties, including 325,000 deaths. And Russian fertility rates are the lowest they have been for 200 years. Anton Kotyakov, the labor minister, has told Vladimir Putin that the country faces a labor shortage of 11 million people by 2030.

So concerning is this crisis that Rosstat, the national statistics agency, has stopped publishing monthly demographic data. State officials and local governors have been told to compete to come up with the most innovative solutions to a seemingly intractable problem. The pressure on Russian officials and the Kremlin is leading to desperate measures, including guidance from the Russian health ministry that women who say they do not want to have children should be referred to a psychologist. Nothing the Russian state has tried has worked, from financial incentives (extended even to schoolgirls under 18) to banning advertising that supposedly promotes “child-free” lifestyles and so-called “LGBTQ propaganda.”   

Darina, 16, assembles Shahed-style drones at a factory in Alabuga, Tatarstan, Russia. Screenshots from YouTube video by T-invariant.

Alongside “anti-woke” policies disguised as family values, is rising xenophobia and anti-immigrant rhetoric that has led to a marked decline in the number of foreigners living in Russia. The Kremlin’s anti-migrant policies include a new system to monitor migrant workers through biometric registration, location tracking, and intensified police oversight. The Russian parliament is currently debating enhancing the number of offences that can be punished by deportation or substantially increased fines. Much of it is targeted at Russia’s Central Asian migrants who make up an overwhelming majority of immigrant labor. Some Central Asian governments, notably Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, have now urged their citizens to think twice about going to Russia for work. 

Russia has been publicizing political stunts such as its “shared values visa” in which applicants from 46, largely developed, nations are given temporary residence permits if they profess to support “traditional Russian values.” The visa, the Kremlin has said, is “Russia’s response to what it perceives as the harmful effects of Western neoliberal policies.” But only a tiny fraction of the immigrants Russia needs will be Westerners who apply for such a visa; instead, Russia has been diversifying its pool of migrant workers by looking further east. Around 72,000 work permits were issued to Indian nationals in 2025, up from just 5,000 in 2021. Russian officials have signaled they are ready to accept “unlimited” numbers of workers from South Asian countries like India, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar.

While the Kremlin is looking to South Asia and Africa to address its immediate need for workers (and soldiers), the ambition in the longer term is to boost Russian birthr rates, despite the signal failure of ongoing attempts. 

In the U.S., there have been several moves borrowed from the Kremlin’s playbook, including the restriction of abortion, the attempt to deny women birth control, and even alarm at the fall in teen pregnancies. But data released this month showed that women in the U.S. gave birth to 710,000 fewer babies in 2025 than they did in 2007, a reflection of two decades of steadily dropping birth rates. Russian demographer Salavat Abylkalikov, at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies in Germany, says “if the birth rate has fallen below the level of simple reproduction, it is almost impossible to raise it back.” Especially when financial incentives cover just a fraction of childcare costs. 

In any case, Abylkalikov says, “in Russia, death is much more profitable than birth: in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, the government provides around 1,000,000 rubles (about $12,000) for each child, but if one person goes to war and dies, the family receives up to 12 million rubles in total. That's more than $120,000. This is the economy of death.” The evidence, from countries like Russia, Hungary and the U.S., is that appeals to tradition, to religion and to female “responsibility” do not work, when support for families is limited. And while migration is an obvious fix to demographic questions everywhere, it’s politically toxic.

Russia knows it is hurtling towards demographic doom but can do little to halt the momentum. Its policies are riddled with inconsistencies — a strong line in anti-migration rhetoric and bullying, while being forced to import workers and soldiers from Asia and Africa; a patriarchal view of women’s roles, mostly confined to the domestic, while increasingly reliant on women to take the jobs of the men who are fighting and dying in Putin's war; and encouraging more women to give birth, while employing children to build drones. With family values like these, no wonder young Russians are hesitant to procreate.

The post Teens making drones: Russia’s demographic collapse appeared first on Coda Story.

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Portuguese political prisoners still being held by Venezuela

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Portugal has requested the intervention of Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, to secure the release of five Portuguese-Venezuelan political prisoners who remain detained in the South American country’s jails. The

The post Portuguese political prisoners still being held by Venezuela appeared first on Portugal Resident.

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President, PM call on emigrés, and offspring, to “come back to Portugal!”

President António José Seguro, has said today that Portugal is now a modern country “that wants its people back”. The president was speaking at an event with the Portuguese community

The post President, PM call on emigrés, and offspring, to “come back to Portugal!” appeared first on Portugal Resident.

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AI-Powered Surveillance Takes Off in Texas

by Francesca D’annunzio | Texas Observer via Truthdig Over the past several years, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) has quietly built out an expansive surveillance apparatus — one that’s increasingly powered by artificial intelligence. Many of these technology acquisitions have been made under the auspices of Gov. Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star, an $11 billion program that has supercharged the state’s decades-long border militarization. The powerful and well-funded state police agency has not just expanded its existing surveillance capabilities, which include a fleet of spy planes, unmanned drones and a network of wildlife game cameras that are deployed across […]
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Portuguese lawyer suspected of massive immigration scam remanded in custody

Unveiling the world of corruption

A Portuguese lawyer suspected of having helped to illegally regularise the status of around 4,000 immigrants in Portugal has been remanded in custody today, while his co-defendant, an Indian businessman, is

The post Portuguese lawyer suspected of massive immigration scam remanded in custody appeared first on Portugal Resident.

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‘We demand freedom’: Immigrants on strike in New Jersey prison

ICE agents spray a protestor with a chemical irritant before detaining them outside of the federal immigration center at Delaney Hall, where ICE is housing detained immigrants, on May 28, 2026 in Newark, New Jersey. Photo by Adam Gray/Getty Images
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This story originally appeared in Labor Notes on May 29, 2026. It is shared here with permission.

On a patch of sidewalk on a busy industrial corridor in Newark, federal agents with rifles, metal batons, flak vests, and balaclavas faced off against unarmed activists with cardboard signs and a bullhorn. Detained workers could be heard on the soccer field behind the prison walls, shouting in Spanish, “¡Libertad!” (Freedom!)

Since May 22, 300 of them are on a work stoppage and hunger strike. Over video chat, one worker told the crowd outside that they had stopped eating and working for as little as $1 an hour (or no pay at all) to demand an improvement in their living conditions. “But that’s not all we demand,” he said. “We are also doing this to demand freedom. We’re not treated like people. We’re treated like animals.”

The hunger strikers are demanding to meet with the governor, the release of young and elderly detainees and all medically vulnerable people, and ultimately, freedom for all.

For months a group of activists with the ICE Out of NJ coalition, which includes the immigrant rights group Cosecha, the Catholic advocacy group Pax Christi, and the worker center New Labor, has been protesting outside Delaney Hall, a 1,000-bed privately owned detention center where immigrants, mostly Latino, are jailed without due process.

Families and lawyers of the detainees report that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and guards with the GEO Group, the private-prison contractor, have been denying them medical care, offering them food swarming with worms, and refusing them bail bond or access to their lawyers. Many were snatched from construction job sites, or still wearing their service-industry work clothes; others were taken while reporting at courthouses for green-card appointments.

“In our cases, we had already been processed, we were complying with legal requirements, and there was no order from a judge for our detention or arrest,” wrote a worker identified as Brian in a handwritten letter in early May, co-signed by 300 others with redacted names, pleading for help from elected officials. “ICE officers did not take into account the fact that there was already an immigration court date, and they arrested us during check-in appointments at USCIS [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services] facilities.”

FROM SCARCE FOOD TO NONE

They struck because they wanted to hit their jailers’ bottom line, but they were already going without food, and their health has further deteriorated. “People aren’t eating because of the strike we are organizing and there’s no medical assistance,” said a released hunger striker named Luis to Radio Jornalera (Day Laborer Radio). Speaking with his back to the camera to conceal his identity for fear of retaliation by ICE, Luis said another detainee had become severely dehydrated and couldn’t walk. Food was already scarce or inedible, even before the strike.

When hunger strikers sought medical help at the nursing center in the prison, “they wouldn’t lend us the wheelchair,” Luis said. “We had to put in our own pills, give our own liquids with sugar and a little salt to compensate for electrolytes.” He said there has been no due process for the detentions; he was detained by ICE during a routine check-in, which doesn’t normally occur for people who have a legal case going through the immigration system. People with no criminal records have faced exorbitant fees of upwards of $50,000 for bail, or outright denials to be released on bond.

“If they freed us, we wouldn’t generate profit for this business,” Luis told the Guardian.

Nationwide, the majority of imprisoned immigrants through 2025 had no criminal records. As the American Prospect has reported, the GEO Group is raking in record profits with a federal contract valued at $1 billion. Some of these profits come from imprisoned immigrants working for little or no pay. Workers report they are coerced into participating in the government’s supposedly Voluntary Work Program through solitary confinement and other forms of torture.

The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery, with an asterisk: “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” Convicted or not, all labor has value. But what’s doubly wrong is that immigrants in ICE jails haven’t even been convicted, and are being denied due process.

VIOLENT RETALIATION

In what activists are calling retaliation, on May 28 the GEO guards and ICE agents responded to the hunger strike and work stoppage with beatings. Detainees have reported to their lawyers and families that striking units have even had the building’s ventilation cut off, while the floors in some cells are smeared with the blood of detainees.

“Right now there are ICE agents inside of Delaney Hall violently beating the hunger strikers,” Nedia Morsy, director of the nonprofit Make the Road NJ, said in a statement. “Someone will be killed if no one intervenes and shuts this down.”

Gabriela Fuentes said her husband Jose Marroquin called her around 1:30 p.m. to “say they were being beaten and pepper sprayed… This started because they [ICE] wanted to take the only person who translates for them in the unit.”

“They wanted to take him away,” she said outside the prison in a video recording. “So all of the prisoners asked to not take him away. So then agents, ICE agents came to the unit and tried to cuff him, and that’s when the confrontation started.”

She said that the detainees lifted their hands to indicate they didn’t want to fight. The guards took them to their cells. “And then there were the prisoners banging on the doors to please let them out,” Fuentes said. “My husband says there was blood in the floor and in the walls that clearly the agents now were cleaning up because they knew they messed up.”

In a statement, Fuentes said that she bolted to the prison to speak out about what was happening inside. When she got there, she saw that “one of the guys was taken by the ambulance because a guard broke his nose.”

U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials said agents responded to “to a physical fight involving detainees at Delaney Hall.” Homeland Security Secretary Markwyane Mullin has upped the ante, threatening to retaliate against sanctuary cities by pulling Customs and Border Protection officers from airports.

Even before the strike, speaking out about conditions in the prison was met with retaliation. “We have to be very careful, everything we say and do is closely monitored, at all times,” Jordi Alvarado told local news outlet NJ.com in early May. “And then, almost as if on cue, his face abruptly disappeared from the screen of the iPhone advocates had used to call him,” reported NJ.com columnist Daysi Calavia-Robertson. On the blacked out screen, a message popped up. “Call paused.” And shortly after, “Call ended.”

OFFICIAL ACTION DEMANDED

Local and federal elected officials have put out statements condemning the deplorable living conditions and treatment of detainees. New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim, a Democrat, went inside the prison on May 25, came out, joined the protestors, and got pepper sprayed. But the ICE Out of NJ coalition is demanding more action.

“Elected officials, the Governor, and the Attorney General cannot continue ignoring what is happening behind these walls,” said Jorge Torres of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network in a statement. “They must enter the facility immediately, speak directly with the people, and hold GEO Group and ICE accountable for this violence.” The detained immigrant workers have written three letters to legislators pleading for their release; they’ve received no reply.

“I have never thought Delaney Hall should open,” said New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill at a news conference on May 26. “We had a law here in New Jersey against privately run detention facilities…The fact that they wouldn’t let me in there gives you some sense that there is some ‘there’ there, and that’s really concerning to me.”

The cruel impunity is as plain as day, both inside and outside the immigration detention center. On the night of May 27, federal agents struck protesters with batons, pushing one into the path of a tractor trailer wheel, a video shows.

On Thursday after reports of assaults on detainees began circulation, some local elected officials were allowed inside the prison, but access is still limited. That same day, the New Jersey Department of Health was denied full access for an inspection.

The reports often come from the families of the detained. “We’ve been hearing from constituents who have family members inside, including a mother who is being beaten by ICE agents and an 11-year-old girl who spoke to her father inside who said that there are a lot of people inside who are bloodied,” U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman told NJ.com on the afternoon of May 28.

SOLIDARITY FUNDRAISERS

Gabriela Soto’s husband Martin Soto Hernandez was detained in January while buying diapers. He had previously been arrested for a domestic violence incident, but the charges were later dismissed and expunged, according to his lawyers. His lawyer says Soto Hernandez has lost 110 pounds: “He’s skin and bones.”

Even in his poor condition, he helped organize the hunger strike and was later transferred to a different detention camp in Elizabeth, New Jersey, on May 25.

“My husband Martin Soto got illegally detained by ICE tonight,” Soto wrote on a GoFundMe page to raise funds for her husband’s legal defense shortly after he was imprisoned. “We never fully got a lawyer for his immigration status because his court date was due for 2028… I want to be able to have a lawyer defend him so that he can stay here. His kids depend on him. His daughter knows he is her world. This is unfair what Trump is doing to this country. He’s ripping families apart and this is not fair. Please help us.”

“At this very moment, Delaney represents a dark and desolate world for those who sought to attain the American Dream,” said Gloria Guerrero of New Labor in Spanish to Labor Notes. Guerrero organizes alongside domestic workers whose husbands have been detained in ICE prisons. “Children wait for the return of parents detained by a cruel and inhumane system—locked in dungeons, treated like criminals, and stripped of every right, including the right to humane treatment,” she said.

“Yet for others, it is the greatest business venture in history—one that utterly disregards the dignity of human beings. Delaney is a Latino concentration camp where many are forced to sell themselves out of sheer necessity, shielding their faces in shame from a community that cries out: ‘Quit that job now! I am your people! I am your kin!’ Meanwhile, on the inside, others are holding fast in a strike of protest and resistance—a struggle to which we offer hope, and which we support from the outside!”

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Protests erupt at New Jersey detention center in support of hunger striking detainees

ICE (Immigration Customs Enforcement) agents and pro-immigration activists face off outside the Delaney Hall migrant detention center on May 25, 2026 in Newark, New Jersey. Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images

This article was originally published by Truthout on May 26, 2026. It is shared here under a  Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.

Protests erupted on Sunday night outside of the Delaney Hall immigrant jail in Newark, New Jersey, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) moved to transfer a strike leader from the jail.

Some 300 detainees launched a hunger and labor strike on Friday in protest of the conditions at the ICE jail. On Sunday, activists and family members learned that the jail was preparing to move Martin Soto, one of the detainees who had announced the strike.

Gabriela Soto, Martin’s wife, saw ICE agents loading Martin into a van, and ran to block the van that held her husband from leaving the site. Other demonstrators joined in blocking the van from leaving the facility, and forced it back to the detention facility. Protestors formed a blockade for hours to prevent Martin Soto from being moved out of the site.

“Free Martin!” the protestors chanted. “Free them all!”

Later, around 1 am on Monday, ICE agents began to move a caravan of vehicles out of the facility, and protestors again attempted to block the vehicles from leaving. ICE agents then shoved aside protestors, pushing them against the sidewalk and against cars, and pepper sprayed at least one protestor.

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson announced on Monday that after “ICE successfully dispersed approximately 70 agitators” it succeeded in transferring Martin to another facility.

Since the start of the hunger strike, family members and supporters have gathered outside of the detention center. Among others, a 10-year-old child spoke about her father, who is currently being imprisoned in the facility by ICE.

On Friday, Gabriela Soto translated calls from prisoners, including her husband Martin, who said, “We deal with racism, with bad conditions, with guards that do not help us…. It gets worse all the time, and they don’t treat us like people.”

The guards soon cut access to the detainees’ phones so that these calls could not continue.

People being imprisoned at Delaney began a hunger strike after signing two letters describing their circumstances and conditions.

“We feel vulnerable and, in a way, kidnapped — detained without justification — not to mention that we are being tortured physically and psychologically due to the poor food resources provided in these detention centers,” they wrote. “Families are being destroyed and separated.”

“We have seen judges in this detention center who are ready to carry out deportations and mass expulsions without properly reviewing cases,” they went on. “We live with anguish and fear of appearing in court.”

One participant in the labor and hunger strike wrote in a letter describing the conditions of the jail:

We have people sleeping on the floor for not being processed quick enough. They neglect medications for people who are in dire need of it. All of our bonds are denied and they are telling us to file habeas corpus for everyone that is in here, they constantly tell us we are a danger to society. The same judge that denies your bond is the same judge that reviews our immigration court cases and that is not fair.

Delaney opened as an ICE jail in May 2025 in a $1 billion, 15-year contract between private prison contractor GEO Group and ICE. It is the largest ICE facility on the East Coast and has faced pushback since the announcement of its opening.

New Jersey Democratic Sen. Andy Kim visited the detention center Saturday, and wrote on X that he saw inside it a “high school student crying and saying she just wanted to graduate senior year”; a woman “who had a miscarriage in the detention facility” and was “left to manage [it] all on her own”; and a “carton with the milk inside congealed solid.”

On Monday, Kim returned to the site, and said that he was pepper sprayed. “Instead of engaging with me and others about the poor conditions, ICE sent in an armored vehicle and a line of armed agents that only poured gasoline on the fire,” he wrote on X. Kim described ICE agents tackling and restraining protestors and firing pepper balls and spray into the crowd.

On Tuesday morning, the protest continued, and video footage from outside Delaney once again shows ICE agents detaining and dragging protestors.

Leqaa Kordia — a Palestinian from East Jerusalem who was arrested in Newark when meeting with immigration officials about her status and then detained for over a year in ICE jails for her Palestine activism — wrote a statement in solidarity with the Delaney hunger strikers.

“When you choose hunger over submission, you’re doing something that terrifies ICE,” she wrote on Monday. “You are proving that even when they break your bodies, they can’t break your will. You are proving that a person stripped of freedom can’t be stripped of dignity.”

“I know the conditions you’re enduring,” she went on. “The rotten food. The medical neglect. The psychological torture of indefinite limbo. I know what it took for you to look at that tray of slop and say: No more. Not until I’m free.”

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