Gothamist76%
Feds arrest 2 amid ICE clashes with protesters outside Delaney Hall in Newark 15%
By Ryan Kost81%
5/27/2026, 12:21:00 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 19 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Availability Heuristic, and Self-Serving Bias, with Anecdotal as the most egregious example at 42.7% saturation with 277 hits. Analysis detected 1,153 faulty-reasoning hits from 649 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 31% and a BS Rank of 15% (14,391 of 16,813 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 85.60% of the article peer group.
Federal authorities arrested two people late Tuesday outside the Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark, as another night of confrontations between ICE agents and demonstrators pushed the standoff into a sixth day.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced the arrests in a post on X, saying ICE officers had been “assaulted by anti-ICE rioters who sprayed law enforcement with an unknown chemical substance.”
Videos from the scene showed a chaotic situation involving more than a dozen ICE agents during Tuesday night’s confrontations.
Multiple protesters and bystanders posted on social media that ICE deployed pepper spray.
The day’s events continued a pattern in which elected officials and media visit the detention facility during the day before protests heat up during the evening hours.
Mullin said two “anti-ice rioters” were arrested on charges of assaulting, resisting and impeding federal officers, and warned that “anyone who assaults law enforcement will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
Organizers outside Delaney Hall offered a sharply different account of at least one arrest, though it was unclear whether it was one of those announced by Mullin.
Kathy O’Leary, the New Jersey coordinator for the Catholic social justice organization Pax Christi, said in a voicemail left for a Gothamist reporter around midnight that ICE agents had arrested a volunteer who was working as a street medic treating those hit by pepper spray.
O'Leary said the volunteer, whom she identified as a Bloomfield resident, was a U.S.
Army veteran and a U.S. citizen.
According to O’Leary and social media videos, the volunteer was across Doremus Avenue, separated from the facility by four lanes of traffic, when ICE agents moved from the facility and rushed toward him, shouting “eyes on the target.”
They “shoved the volunteer's face into the pavement, handcuffed him and dragged him into the facility,” O’Leary said.
After his arrest, the man was left on the side of the road in Rutherford, O’Leary added in a text message.
Susan Francois, another Pax Christi member, said in a video uploaded to Instagram that the arrested volunteer had been treating protesters exposed to pepper spray before he was taken into custody.
DHS did not respond to requests for additional information about the arrests or the alleged use of pepper spray and instead directed Gothamist to the secretary’s post on X.
The arrests came on the fifth night of demonstrations outside Delaney Hall, where roughly 300 detainees have been on a hunger and labor strike since Friday to protest conditions inside the privately run facility, according to organizers and elected officials who have visited.
Detainees and their advocates have described inadequate food, limited access to medical care and violations of due process.
DHS has disputed those accounts.
Tensions escalated throughout the long weekend.
ICE agents hit Sen.
Andy Kim with pepper spray on Monday after he positioned himself between agents and demonstrators, according to video and photos from the scene.
They also denied New Jersey Gov.
Mikie Sherrill access to the facility.
She said during a press conference Tuesday that the state was “continuing to explore its options” regarding the facility, which she said should never have opened.
Several members of New Jersey's congressional delegation were made to wait to enter, sometimes for several hours, before they were allowed to conduct oversight visits, they said.
U.S.
Reps.
Rob Menendez and LaMonica McIver said they were able to confirm at least some of the protesters’ allegations through their visits over the weekend.
“ The same issues from a year ago continue to plague the facility,” Menendez said in an interview.
“Inadequate healthcare, people with really significant conditions that aren't being appropriately treated … the ventilation in the building, the bathrooms, both from a sanitation perspective and also from a safety perspective.”
This is a developing story and may be updated.
Analysis
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