The war over immigration came to New Jersey in January 2025, four days after Donald Trump was sworn in as president.Heavily armed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stormed into a seafood distribution center in Newark, blocking exits, banging down bathroom doors to make sure no one was hiding inside, and detaining employees without a warrant.Just over three miles away in a heavily industrial area of truck stops and warehouses in the state’s largest city, ICE was already planning to open the largest immigration detention facility on the East Coast, under a 15-year, $1 billion contract with the GEO Group, a private Florida-based prison operator.It was called Delaney Hall.Despite efforts by Newark Mayor Ras J. Baraka to prevent the facility from opening, arguing that the 1,000-bed detention center lacked city planning board approval and a certificate of occupancy, Delaney Hall began accepting immigrants picked up by ICE agents, as part of the administration’s aggressive mass deportation efforts. The entrance to Delaney Hall in Newark Ian Peters | For NJ.comThe facility continues to be a major way-station for those targeted for removal. But while long the scene of protests, as well as efforts by advocates and elected officials to address concerns over the treatment and care of those being detained, Delaney Hall until recently had stayed mostly out of the national spotlight. Today, though, it has become the most volatile flashpoint in America’s immigration war.There have been dark images of officers in riot gear pushing back on angry demonstrators at night. Groups of protestors have shown up, armed with helmets, shields, and gas masks to protect themselves from the tear gas being used in an effort to disperse them. Outside groups like the Proud Boys have come to engage in counter protests.Brightly burning tire fires and other roadside debris serve to illuminate it all on the black asphalt street.“None of this was happening a year ago,” said Baraka, who ordered a curfew in a half-mile area around the facility over the weekend that was finally lifted on Tuesday night.Last May, the mayor found himself an early target when federal authorities charged him with federal trespassing when he attempted to enter the privately owned facility with a congressional delegation on a fact-finding inspection. The trespassing charges were later dismissed since he was not actually on federal property, although separate assault charges were subsequently filed by authorities against U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver, D-10th Dist., who was a member of the group and became involved in a scuffle with immigration officers during a heated exchange. The criminal complaint against the congresswoman is still pending in federal court.Since then, Baraka said there had been not much action outside Delaney Hall, despite the continued daily presence of what he characterized as small groups of demonstrators, families and friends of those detained, all seeking to show their support for those caught up in ICE raids here and across the country, as well as continued pushback from elected officials.“They were there every single day without incident,” said Baraka of the protestors.In recent weeks, however, the situation on Doremus Avenue where Delaney Hall is located has dramatically changed.A hunger strike by detainees last month that brought new attention to the facility might have been a reason for the turning point, said the mayor.Joyce Phipps, the director of Casa de Esperanza in Bound Brook and a veteran immigration attorney, agreed, noting a palpable change in the atmosphere outside Delaney Hall following the well-publicized hunger strike by detainees who were able to smuggle a letter out to family members and advocates detailing their allegations about conditions inside.She recalled attending a march and short protest on Good Friday in early April. “Even the GEO staff was friendly,” Phipps said of the mood that day. “In fact, there had been a tent where the protesters met with family members.”There have been no smiling faces lately, though, as the situation outside Delaney has turned increasingly tense over the last two weeks.“ICE escalated it,” charged Baraka. “I think they’re looking for conflict.”A growing group of demonstrators also appeared ready for confrontation.During a chaotic Memorial Day weekend, Gov. Mikie Sherrill, U.S. Sen. Andy Kim, and other members of the state’s congressional delegation joined protestors and tried to access the facility for a surprise inspection. The crowd at one point attempted to block ICE vehicles, setting up makeshift barricades and hurling water bottles. Two were accused of assaulting and resisting federal officers. Kim was pepper-sprayed.New Jersey State Police led the charge against protesters on Sunday, May 31. Ian Peters | For NJ.comICE did not respond to repeated requests for comment. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the immigration enforcement agency, blamed “rioters” and politicians who turned Delaney Hall into an epicenter of protest. Advocates disagree. Lori A. Nessel, director of the Immigrants’ Rights/International Human Rights Law Clinic at Seton Hall Law School, said Delaney Hall became a tinderbox in part because of a continuing lack of transparency by ICE over what she called the “horrific conditions” there, as well as the strong community support that has been there from the start.“Even though things have exploded, it’s been building,” she said of the backlash there.The situation at Delaney could have played out similarly at any ICE detention center in the country these days, she believed, with families and advocates “increasingly outraged and ICE officers willing to resort to violence.”But what made it more likely as a target for opposition to the Trump immigration agenda than anything else might be its very location, according to Matthew Hale, a political science professor at Seton Hall University.“It is just the easiest place to get to protest,” he pointed out. It is also in the largest media market in the country, Hale added, unlike some of the more remote ICE detention centers around the country, such as the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, which is more than 42 miles from the nearest airport in the city of Columbus, making visitation, finding legal representation, or even attending immigration hearings very difficult.“Most of the other facilities in the country facing similar accusations are smaller markets with less media and less people who want to protest,” he said.Amol Sinha, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, agreed that location played a part. But even beyond that, it did not surprise him that Delaney became a flashpoint.Protesters near Delaney Hall Ed Murray| For NJ.com“There has been activism there for the past year. Significant activism,” he said. “Delaney Hall has been notorious for conditions ever since it opened. There was controversy over whether it could even open. This place has been plagued with scandal and notoriety and deplorable conditions.”What is happening at Delaney Hall today is undoubtedly a confluence of politics and geography, said Michael DuHaime, a public affairs executive and Republican strategist well familiar with issues of crisis management. “Newark is in the most densely populated part of the most densely populated state in the country, which is right next to the biggest city in America,” he said. “That means there are lots and lots of people on both sides of this emotional issue who can very easily make it to Newark to make their voices heard.”Most of those people, he maintains, are acting in good faith who may have strong feelings on immigration and immigrants’ rights, but do not mean any harm to each other or to law enforcement. But “if you want to really cause trouble,” you can get to Delaney Hall too, he said. “Both sides think they gain even more when it escalates, thinking they can blame the extremists on the other side,” DuHaime commented.Newark Police motorcycles stand by on Doremus Avenue as city police officers dispersed protesters after a 9 pm curfew near Delaney Hall Andrew Mills | NJ.comYet former New Jersey Attorney General John J. Farmer Jr. wondered if the location of the detention center in a heavily immigrant state where ICE tactics have met with wide disapproval was deliberate and intended by the administration to spark the response that it did.“For those anti-ICE activists prone to use violence to express their opposition, Delaney Hall is in friendly territory, and their efforts are more likely to be well received locally,” he said. “A cynic might suggest that the siting itself was a provocative decision, and that the reaction on the streets has been precisely what the hard liners covet to energize their anti-immigration base.” Either way, the fight over the future of the facility is far from over.Newark wants Delaney Hall gone, the city’s mayor, Baraka, said. It’s going to sue the GEO Group in an effort to force it to shut down.For its part, the state filed a lawsuit in Superior Court against the GEO Group on Tuesday, seeking to force the company to allow unrestricted access to health inspectors who were barred from certain areas of the facility when they visited last week despite complaints of “unsanitary bathroom conditions and potentially inadequate tuberculosis infection control practices,” according to the complaint.“The reports of unsanitary and unsafe conditions inside Delaney Hall are extremely concerning, and GEO Group — like any other business and facility in New Jersey — must follow the law,” said state Attorney General Jennifer Davenport.MORE BY TED SHERMANThe U.S. Department of Homeland Security seems ready for a fight. In a post on X, it called New Jersey’s lawsuit “frivolous.”“ICE is committed to transparency, and Delaney Hall complies with all required state and local laws.”