Protester hurt during confrontation with ICE agents outside Delaney Hall
Woman hospitalized with a fractured foot after a prayer vigil
After disrupting a Monday night prayer vigil, a federal immigration agent drove over a protester’s foot outside Delaney Hall, sending her to the hospital, according to activists and videos posted to social media.
The woman was participating in the weekly Monday night prayer circle near the entrance of the controversial immigrant detention center at about 8:45 p.m. on Aug. 31 when a marked SUV driven by two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents pulled up, a video posted to Instagram showed.
Chaos quickly erupted as demonstrators screamed at the agents, telling them they were interrupting their prayer vigil and telling the agents they could use one of the other entrances to the facility in Newark. One agent got out of the car and tried to push protesters away. Instead, they stood in front of the vehicle.
“ICE is running over a prayer circle!” Casey Ward, a hairdresser from Garfield, yelled on her Instagram video. “You’re driving through a prayer circle — for what?”
Seconds later, a masked woman wearing a backpack fell backward near the SUV’s front driver-side tire, eliciting more screams from the crowd, according to a video taken by another activist.
The SUV, which had the motto “Defend the Homeland” scrawled on its hood, apparently rolled over one of the woman’s boots and stayed there, fracturing her left foot, Ward told The Jersey Vindicator on Tuesday.
The victim, who is from South Jersey but did not want to be identified, went to the hospital for treatment and will likely need surgery, Ward said.
“This poor girl is not going to be able to walk or work for months,” Ward said. “We consider this attempted murder, and ICE needs to be held accountable … we want justice and accountability. This is how ICE operates. They do this for fun.”
“There are several other entrances [to Delaney] they can and do use,” she continued. “But when they see that we are having a peaceful prayer vigil, they say, ‘Yeah, we want to drive through that.’ And they do. And they run over a young woman, then they back out and go through the other entrance like they should have done from the jump. This is what ICE does.”
GEO Group, the private prison company that runs the detention facility as part of a 15-year, $1 billion contract, referred inquiries to ICE on Tuesday.
When asked about the encounter, an anonymous spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), ICE’s parent agency, asked for a copy of the video but did not respond further.
Delaney Hall, a 1,000-bed facility in an industrial neighborhood near the mouth of Newark Bay that has housed thousands of detainees swept up in the Trump administration’s immigration raids, has been a flashpoint for activists in the region.
Many detainees, their families and immigration activists have repeatedly complained about conditions inside the complex, including foul water, inedible food and medical neglect.
At least three detainees have died following unspecified medical episodes, with two of those deaths occurring in the last six weeks.
Elected officials, including several members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation, have toured the facility and called for its closure.
But ICE, DHS and GEO Group have denied any wrongdoing or negligence.
Steve Janoski is an award-winning investigative journalist with nearly two decades of experience covering criminal justice, policing, courts, government, and politics. His reporting has exposed corruption, government malfeasance, and police misconduct. His work has appeared in the New York Post, USA Today, The Associated Press, The Record, and the Asbury Park Press. At The Jersey Vindicator, he covers criminal justice. Reach Steve at steve AT jerseyvindicator.org.