Newark Mayor Ras Baraka ordered a mandatory curfew around the Delaney Hall immigration detention center on Sunday after days of escalating confrontations between protesters and law enforcement, closing streets and restricting movement within a half-mile radius of the facility until further notice.
The curfew runs nightly from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. Doremus Avenue, the road nearest the 1,000-bed facility used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is now closed to all pedestrian traffic beginning at midnight. Baraka framed the order as a public-safety measure.
The Hill reported that the curfew came after a week of protests outside Delaney Hall that turned violent over the weekend, with masked individuals attacking barriers, throwing projectiles at officers, and setting tires ablaze in the street, according to New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill, who posted an account of the chaos on X Sunday morning.
A Democratic governor describes the violence
Sherrill, herself a vocal opponent of the detention facility who has called for its closure, offered a blunt description of what happened. Her statement is worth reading in full, because it did not come from a defender of ICE or the Trump administration. It came from a Democrat who deployed her own state police to keep order and then watched things fall apart.
Sherrill wrote on X:
"Masked individuals at Delaney Hall attacked the barrier in the protected protest area and began aggressive and dangerous actions against Newark and New Jersey State Police, including throwing projectiles, utilizing the barriers as weapons, and lighting tires on fire in the street."
She continued:
"These actions put both peaceful protestors and law enforcement in danger. The police were not in protective gear; they had been on location since early in the morning ensuring protestors and counter protestors had areas to exercise their rights safely."
That last detail matters. Officers arrived without riot gear, expecting a lawful demonstration. Masked agitators turned it into something else. The governor's own words make that distinction clear.
Baraka's curfew order
Baraka, a Democrat, issued his order Sunday with immediate effect. His statement was direct.
"To ensure the safety and well-being of all residents, a mandatory curfew for a half-mile area surrounding Delaney Hall is being implemented, effective immediately. Beginning at 12 a.m., Doremus Avenue will be closed to all pedestrian traffic."
The curfew remains in place "until further notice." No end date has been set. The order effectively clears the area around the facility each night, giving law enforcement a legal tool to disperse anyone lingering near the site after dark.
This pattern, protests spiraling into property destruction and assaults on officers, has become familiar at ICE-related facilities. Just weeks ago, the FBI arrested a protester accused of threatening to kill the family of an ICE officer at the same Newark detention center, a reminder that the rhetoric around these demonstrations has real consequences.
DHS draws a hard line
The Department of Homeland Security posted on X after law enforcement clashed with protesters on Sunday. The agency shared photos of empty streets outside the facility and declared the area secure.
"Together with our state and local law enforcement partners, we have SECURED the area around Delaney Hall. ANYONE who attempts to obstruct law enforcement or disrupt our facility will face the FULL weight of the law. WE WON'T BACK DOWN."
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Gov. Sherrill reportedly found common ground on Saturday after Sherrill deployed state police to maintain order. That moment of bipartisan cooperation, a Republican cabinet secretary and a Democratic governor agreeing that violence against police officers is unacceptable, lasted about as long as you'd expect.
Sen. Andy Kim pepper sprayed
Democratic Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey was pepper sprayed amid the protests on Monday, adding a dramatic subplot that Democrats have used to shift attention from the violence toward conditions inside Delaney Hall.
Kim posted on social media at the time, describing what he said prompted the unrest:
"Detainees protesting the lack of due process, the disgusting food and poor treatment while their families and advocates stood outside calling for help."
He added:
"Instead of engaging with me and others about the poor conditions, ICE sent in an armored vehicle and a line of armed agents that only poured gasoline on the fire."
Kim's claims about conditions inside the facility remain unverified by any independent inspection cited in available reporting. His framing places blame on ICE for escalating the situation, a characterization that sits uneasily alongside Sherrill's own account of masked agitators throwing projectiles and setting fires before any armored vehicle arrived.
The broader pattern of organized violence at detention facilities is not new. A federal jury recently convicted nine Antifa cell members for an armed assault on a Texas ICE detention center, and protest-related destruction has hit other major cities as well, including a case where a Brooklyn protester pleaded guilty to torching eleven NYPD vehicles in a predawn arson spree.
Democrats divided on how to respond
The Delaney Hall standoff has exposed a fault line among New Jersey Democrats. Sherrill and fellow Democrats have called for the closure of the 1,000-bed facility and sought to conduct oversight of it last week alongside House and Senate colleagues. They oppose ICE's use of the site.
But Sherrill's willingness to deploy state police and her frank description of the violence distinguish her from elected officials who have been slower to condemn the attacks on officers. Her statement explicitly noted that the masked individuals endangered "both peaceful protestors and law enforcement", a distinction some of her colleagues have been reluctant to draw.
Baraka's curfew, meanwhile, is an acknowledgment that the situation had moved beyond peaceful protest. A Democratic mayor in a deep-blue city does not impose a half-mile curfew and shut down a public street unless things have gone badly wrong.
The question nobody in Newark's political establishment seems eager to answer is a simple one: who were the masked individuals? Sherrill described them. Baraka responded to the chaos they caused. DHS warned them. But no arrests have been publicly reported in connection with the weekend clashes.
ICE enforcement actions continue to generate intense political opposition, and the agency's work intersects with broader public-safety concerns. In one recent case, ICE arrested a Vietnamese national convicted of attempted capital murder of a police officer who had lived free in Houston for fifteen years, the kind of case that reminds voters why immigration enforcement exists in the first place.
What remains unanswered
Several basic facts remain unclear. No reporting has specified how many people were involved in the clashes, whether injuries beyond Kim's pepper-spraying occurred, or what legal authority Baraka invoked for the curfew. The conditions inside Delaney Hall that Kim described have not been independently confirmed.
What is confirmed, by a Democratic governor's own words, is that masked agitators attacked police officers who showed up without protective gear, expecting a lawful demonstration. Officers who had spent the day ensuring that protesters and counter-protesters could exercise their rights safely were met with projectiles, weaponized barriers, and burning tires.
The curfew holds until further notice. The facility remains operational. And the people who lit the fires remain unidentified.
When a Democratic mayor, a Democratic governor, and the Department of Homeland Security all agree that a situation has spiraled out of control, the only people still pretending otherwise are the ones who helped it spiral.
