The mayor of Newark on Sunday announced a partial curfew in New Jersey’s largest city following repeated clashes near a federal immigration detention center between protesters and authorities.
The move, backed by Gov. Mikie Sherrill, is another attempt by New Jersey Democrats to avoid federal intervention and is the latest drama around Delaney Hall, a 1,000-bed facility run by a private company, that has been a political flashpoint since it reopened in May 2025, just months after President Donald Trump returned to office.
Just after midnight Sunday, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka — who was arrested by federal agents while trying to inspect the facility a year ago — announced the curfew, which covers limited areas in a largely industrial corner of the city between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m., until further notice. (A federal charge against Baraka was later dropped.)
State Attorney General Jenn Davenport said during a Sunday press conference with the governor that “a large group of individuals took significant aggressive and threatening actions” at Delaney Hall. Some, she said, set tires on fire in the street and tried to use a "bike rack barrier as a weapon” toward law enforcement.
“When the attacks took place last night, we had some red lines, one of them is obviously public safety and the safety of our law enforcement,” Sherrill said. “And when those attacks came, that’s why we made this decision.”
The curfew is another sign that Democrats are trying to control protests on their own and avoid giving the Trump administration what Sherrill on Friday called a “pretext” to surge immigration agents into the area and begin a Minneapolis-style campaign in a city where more than a third of the population was born outside the United States.
Following dramatic scenes last week between protesters and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials on the site, Sherrill on Friday announced the establishment of designated protest zones in an effort to “lower the temperature" around the facility, with State Police monitoring the area outside the detention facility. Protests have intensified over the last week and a half as some detainees announced a hunger strike to demonstrate against alleged inhumane and unsanitary conditions. Sherrill and other Democrats, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) who visited the facility this weekend, have called the facility's conditions inhumane and called for heightened oversight.
While the designation of specific protest zones monitored by local police curbed confrontations between protesters and federal authorities, it largely shifted that anger from e the federal agents to the state authorities on the scene.
Democratic officials in the state are so far standing by Sherrill, including Baraka, who ran to her left during the primary campaign last year.
But some left-leaning factions are pushing back against the intervention by the State Police.
Make the Road New Jersey, a progressive immigrants rights group that has long organized protests outside Delaney Hall, called the State Police’s intervention “an absolute disgrace” in a statement released Sunday morning.
“The State Police have showed up in riot gear and have gassed protesters as less than lethal projectiles have been fired at the crowd,” Nedia Morsy, director of the group, said in a statement.
Sherrill said on Sunday that she supported the state's troopers.
“Having worked with New Jersey State Police and local law enforcement, I know how well trained they are,” she said. “The best in the nation. I trust them to follow our constitution. I knew it would be better to have them handle the situation rather than ICE.”
For months, the Trump administration has sought to keep its immigration enforcement efforts out of the political spotlight, but Delaney Hall is a test of that balance. The new head of the Department of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, in recent days has threatened to pull customs agents out of Newark Liberty International Airport — one of three major airports that serves New York City — and send them to Delaney Hall, prompting fears of travel chaos just as New Jersey prepares to host the World Cup.
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