Protests continued on Tuesday outside an immigration detention center in New Jersey where US senator Andy Kim said he was pepper-sprayed by federal agents the day before during a demonstrations against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) outside the facility.
Video posted on social media showed Kim, a Democrat representing New Jersey, receiving help from a volunteer on Monday, who is seen pouring water in his eyes outside Delaney Hall in Newark, where detainees have said they are staging a hunger strike against poor conditions and the denial of medical care.
Demonstrators had clashed with immigration officers who used batons and pepper spray over the weekend as they attempted to transfer a detainee who organized the hunger strike to another facility. On Tuesday, masked ICE officials forced people out of the way as vehicles moved in and out of the facility.
Kim, a senator from New Jersey, had joined the state’s governor, Mikie Sherrill, also a Democrat, at the protest to speak with relatives of some of those detained. He told USA Today that the incident in which he was sprayed by a chemical substance came shortly after he had been inside Delaney Hall to see conditions for himself.
He said he emerged to a “standoff” between protesters and agents from ICE, who he said had deployed an armored vehicle as a barricade, and that he “kind of lined up in front of them” to try to de-escalate the situation.
“ICE officials told me that they were going to push through the crowd with their vehicle and they wanted to get some vehicles out of there,” Kim said.
“I tried to arrange a situation where people would not get hurt, where there wouldn’t be a confrontation. Unfortunately, ICE just continued on.”
People were “getting tackled and brought to the ground” and ICE “started pushing through with their vehicles” and “started shooting at us with pepper balls and using pepper spray”, he said.
“I tried to do whatever I could standing in the middle to keep people safe.”
In a post on X, Kim said he saw “chaos inside and outside” of the facility, adding:
“What I witnessed and experienced today was shameful. Delaney Hall is a failure; it’s this administration’s failure. The only way to make this right for our communities is to shut it down and make sure the failures we’ve seen never happen again.”
Demonstrators have been at Delaney Hall since Friday, alleging detainees have been denied fresh food and medical care, and that air conditioning was not working.
Detainees released a letter to advocates on Tuesday morning, asserting that they were on hunger strike and a work strike at the facility, and demanding that Sherrill meet with the strikers. Sherrill has said that she had been denied access to the facility.
At the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the parent agency of ICE, the departmental secretary, Markwayne Mullin, posted on X denying that there was a hunger strike at Delaney Hall, in response to Cory Booker, the senior US senator from New Jersey and a Democrat, posting about it. Mullin’s post also said: “There are no sub-prime conditions” at the facility.
The Delaney facility is located in an industrial part of Newark, surrounded by dozens of factories, logistical centers and packaging plants. A nonstop convoy of massive trucks drove by the facility on Tuesday, with few honking in solidarity with the protesters as they drove by.
“Some of [the people detained] have been detained more than eight to 12 months,” Ana Paola Pazmiño from Resistencia en Accion New Jersey, a migrant rights organization, claimed, adding: “The horrible conditions that they’re living in inside are terrible.”
She claimed people were being served rotten or insufficient food, a frequent assertion from those in ICE detention in many parts of the US, and a claim consistently denied by the DHS.
The air surrounding the facility is putrid, smelling like sewage and chemicals, which only seemingly worsened as the weather warmed up on Tuesday, after torrential rain for much of the Memorial Day weekend.
“We’re just tired of this place. We shouldn’t be doing this to fellow human beings,” said the Rev Erich Kussman from the St Bartholomew Lutheran church in Trenton. Kussman has been protesting at the facility since it reopened last year as an immigration detention facility.
Tensions had escalated during Sunday when word spread that authorities were planning to move Martin Soto, a detainee who had announced the strike, to another facility. The DHS later said he had been moved to another facility.
Kim told USA Today on Monday night that his eyes and throat were still burning. He said he would continue to fight the “lawlessness and unaccountability perpetuated by the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress”.
The DHS in a post on X, had blamed “rioters” for the violence.
“No individuals were directly struck by pepper ball projectiles,” the post said.
The DHS further said: “On May 25, 2026, rioters obstructed law enforcement from exiting the ICE facility. Officers issued multiple lawful verbal commands for rioters to clear the area. Rioters refused to follow law enforcement commands and continue to obstruct the exit route. Our law enforcement followed their training and used the minimum amount of force necessary to protect themselves, the public and federal property.
“The first amendment protects speech and peaceful assembly – not rioting. DHS is taking appropriate and constitutional measures to uphold the rule of law and protect our officers and the public from dangerous rioters.”
Monday’s violence came amid stalled efforts by the Trump administration to pass a $70bn funding measure for ICE and the border patrol. Senate Republicans last week derailed the bill, at least temporarily, in a dispute over Donald Trump’s plans for a White House ballroom and the creation of a $1.8bn “anti-weaponization” fund that could enrich people who attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 when Trump sought in vain to overturn his electoral defeat by Joe Biden.
