Immigrants taking part in the massive hunger and labor strike at Delaney Hall — the privately operated Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) jail in Newark, New Jersey, where they are imprisoned — say they are continuing to face harsh retaliation in response to their resistance.

Catalina Adorno, a volunteer with the grassroots immigration rights group Movimiento Cosecha NJ, says people inside have been denied visits, phone and video calls, tablets, toilet paper, and access to common spaces. Strikers have reportedly also been pepper-sprayed, beaten, isolated, forced to go to the cafeteria, and transferred out of state.

“This is not the complete list of retaliatory acts we have seen,” Adorno told me, “but I just want to make clear that the retaliation is very real.”

The immigrants at Delaney Hall launched the initial hunger and labor strike on May 22. The strikers issued demands that included the immediate release of all detained people, with urgent priority for elderly people, pregnant people, young people, and people with serious medical conditions; meaningful and fair review of immigration cases and habeas petitions; an end to coercive pressure to sign deportation or voluntary departure documents; and an in-person meeting with New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill so she can observe conditions and hear directly from people inside.

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How to Support the Hunger Strikers at Delaney From Afar

At Delaney Hall, multiple struggles are converging as detained people resist the extraction of their labor, sexual abuse, medical neglect, terror, coercion, family separation, and confinement itself.

The immigrants imprisoned at Delaney Hall have described months, and sometimes more than a year, of incarceration; cursory hearings; denied bonds and habeas petitions; rushed deportation orders; coercion; family separation; medical neglect; unsafe conditions; and retaliation for speaking out. They are demanding release and the opportunity to pursue their cases from home, with their families and communities.

Adorno says elected officials should be advocating for the release of those imprisoned at Delaney Hall and the facility’s closure. For everyone else, she says the first responsibility is to listen.

“Everyone should read the letters of the strikers,” she said. “Don’t just take our word for it; hear directly from them through these letters.”

Listening, however, is only a first step. Adorno encourages people who are moved by the strikers’ words to take action. She emphasized that supporters do not have to travel to Newark to participate. Organizers have posted calls to action that people can take up from anywhere in the country or around the world.

ICE may have scattered hundreds of people in an effort to break the relationships and collective power they built inside Delaney Hall. But the women who are carrying the strike forward have made clear that dispersal has not extinguished the resistance.

The people imprisoned at Delaney Hall are speaking under conditions designed to isolate and silence them. Their words should be read, circulated, and answered with action.