They’re Pepper Spraying Senators Now
Sources
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Banks, Ashlee. “Facing 17 Years in Prison and Pregnant, NJ Congresswoman LaMonica McIver Fights Federal Charges Tied to ICE Oversight Visit.” AFRO American Newspapers, May 22, 2026. https://afro.com/congresswoman-faces-federal-appeal/.
Bekiempis, Victoria. “Protesters Clash with ICE Agents Outside New Jersey Detention Center.” US News. The Guardian, May 25, 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/25/new-jersey-ice-immigration-protest.
Hogan, Gwynne. “Protesters Block Newark ICE Detention Facility as Hunger and Work Strike Enters Day 3.” THE CITY - NYC News, May 25, 2026. https://www.thecity.nyc/2026/05/25/protesters-newark-ice-detention-delaney-hall-hunger-strike/.
Janoski, Steve. “Death of Delaney Hall Detainee Fuels Calls to Close Newark ICE Facility • The Jersey Vindicator.” Immigration. The Jersey Vindicator, December 23, 2025. https://jerseyvindicator.org/2025/12/23/death-of-delaney-hall-detainee-fuels-calls-to-close-newark-ice-facility/.
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Janoski, Steve. “Judge Sends Newark’s Lawsuit against Delaney Hall Operator to Mediation • The Jersey Vindicator.” Immigration. The Jersey Vindicator, May 22, 2026. https://jerseyvindicator.org/2026/05/22/judge-sends-newarks-lawsuit-against-delaney-hall-operator-to-mediation/.
LII / Legal Information Institute. “8 U.S. Code § 1101 - Definitions.” Accessed May 26, 2026. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1101.
Movimiento Cosecha. “SOS: A Letter from Delaney Hall.” Accessed May 26, 2026. https://www.lahuelga.com/sos.
Pellish. “Trump Administration Elevates Former Private Prison Company Exec to Lead ICE.” POLITICO, May 12, 2026. https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/12/venturella-ice-trump-00918125.
Romine, Chris Boyette, Sarah Dewberry, Taylor. “Protesters Clash with Agents Outside New Jersey ICE Facility. Inside, Detainees Continue Their Hunger Strike, Attorneys Say.” CNN, May 25, 2026. https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/25/us/new-jersey-ice-facility-protests.
Scott. “US Senator Pepper-Sprayed by ICE Outside Immigration Detention Center.” The Independent, May 26, 2026. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/andy-kim-ice-immigration-pepper-spray-delaney-hall-b2983455.html.
Sen. Cory Booker [@SenBooker]. “Immigrants at Delaney Hall are on a hunger strike because they are fighting for their human rights. The conditions there are deplorable. We’re working with our partners in the state to bring an end to this nightmare and I’ll be going to Delaney Hall again to conduct oversight.” Tweet. Twitter, May 25, 2026. https://x.com/SenBooker/status/2058937034446660060.
Staff, Al Jazeera. “Trump Taps David Venturella, Former Private Prison Executive, to Lead ICE.” Al Jazeera. Accessed May 26, 2026. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/5/13/trump-taps-david-venturella-former-private-prison-executive-to-lead-ice.
Woodward. “Hundreds of ICE Detainees on Hunger Strike over Detention Center Conditions across US.” The Independent, May 25, 2026. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/ice-hunger-strike-delaney-hall-new-jersey-b2983212.html.
Woodward. “ICE Shuts down Detention Center Watchdog Even as Use of Force Explodes.” The Independent, May 5, 2026. https://www.independent.co.uk/nedws/world/americas/us-politics/ice-detention-center-abuse-watchdog-office-closes-b2970785.html.
Transcript
Hi it’s Tuesday, May 26th, 2026, you’re tuned in to Why, America? I’m your lawyer friend, Leeja Miller. Yesterday, DHS officers pepper sprayed a sitting US Senator. New Jersey Senator Andy Kim was visiting Delaney Hall, a notorious immigrant detention center in Newark, when DHS officers deployed chemical agents and shot pepper balls into the crowd which included Senator Kim who was present to attempt an inspection of the facility. Federal law guarantees Congressmembers can visit immigrant detention centers without notice, a fact that the Trump regime has attempted to refute since the beginning of Trump’s second term last year. Protesters, who are present nearly every day outside the Delaney Hall facility to call out the inhumane treatment of detainees held inside, had formed a line in front of ICE agents to attempt to stop a vehicle transporting detainees to a different facility. As tensions began to escalate, Senator Kim positioned himself between the crowd of protesters and ICE agents, to try to de-escalate the situation. Instead, the agents began shooting at protesters with pepper balls, releasing pepper spray, and tackling protesters to the ground. DHS claims it was a riot, though there was no indication that protesters were engaged in any activities other than putting their bodies in the way of ICE vehicles and yelling out their dissent at passing agents, neither of which amounts to the commonly understood definition of a “riot.” This is just the latest in a litany of incidents in which members of Congress have been abused by DHS and immigration enforcement as they attempted to do their jobs on behalf of their constituents and ask questions about things the Trump regime wants to keep under wraps. Since last week, at least 300 detainees being held against their will in Delaney Hall have been engaged in a hunger and labor strike to protest the inhumane conditions inside the facility. Though DHS denies that a hunger strike is even happening at all. Today, we’re discussing the Denaley Hall hunger strike and we’re not looking away from the fact that a sitting US Senator was pepper sprayed by what is effectively Trump’s personal police force.
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Delaney Hall is a 1000-bed immigration detention center near Newark Airport in what is known as Newark’s “Chemical Corridor.” The line of families and protesters outside the facility, along with its 800-900 detainees, are subjected to the putrid, rotting stench that wafts over the grounds of Delaney Hall from the nearby natural gas plant, sewage treatment facility, and animal fat rendering plant. That this location was chosen, to put immigrant detainees in a box alongside other garbage, is no coincidence. Their relatives are forced to sit outside in the elements, forming a line outside the gates where they are provided no food, shelter, water, or bathroom facilities while they wait for hours for the hope of seeing their family member inside the facility. A rotund, cruel man nicknamed Mr. Sunshine is frequently posted as security at the gates, choosing at his whim who can enter and who can’t, frequently using his power to enact petty revenge on family members who cause a stir, ask too many questions, or allow their kids to draw chalk hopscotch squares on the pavement, among other infractions. For days, Gabriela Soto, 4 months pregnant with her third child, has organized protests outside the facility, while her detained husband Martin has allegedly helped organize the hunger and labor strike happening inside Delaney Hall’s walls. Since Friday, at least 300 detainees inside Delaney Hall have announced they would be engaging in an ongoing hunger and labor strike to protest the deplorable conditions they are being subjected to inside. Martin Soto Hernandez, for his part, is allegedly being singled out for punishment inside Delaney Hall, held in solitary confinement and denied access to his phone privileges. He has repeatedly been subjected to questioning both about his wife’s activities outside the prison as well as his own efforts to participate in the hunger strike. DHS officials have repeatedly claimed that there is no hunger strike happening at all, and that the conditions inside Delaney Hall are humane. This despite numerous reports, for months, made by lawyers, advocates, and lawmakers who have seen the inside of the detention facility and who have spoken with detainees and their family members about the squalor that the people inside Delaney hall are being subjected to.
Since Delaney Hall first opened as an immigrant detention center early last year at the beginning of Trump’s second term, reports have been coming out of numerous abuses that make daily life inside the center unlivable. This includes water that is so contaminated from the nearby facilities that it smells bad coming straight out of the tap and authorities have had to ship in bottled water. Sometimes that bottled water isn’t available, however, and detainees are advised to drink the water coming out the tap at their own risk, though of course there’s no real choice at all when it’s either contaminated water or death by dehydration. As for the food, detainees report being served tuna and ham sandwiches that are still frozen, vegetables that are old and nearly rotten, and at least one person has reported that they were served rice that was crawling with maggots. And that’s when they are served food at all, which is reportedly infrequent and unpredictable. Sometimes breakfast happens at 4am. Sometimes 7am. Detainees are frequently only served two meals a day. According to Martin Soto Hernandez’s attorneys, he has lost a significant amount of weight and now weighs about 110 pounds, a grown man and father of 2, soon to be three children. Last June, Delaney Hall was the site of a major riot of detainees who, after going 20 hours with no food, were served a paltry lunch and tensions boiled over. The uprising included fighting, property damage, and the escape of 4 male detainees. And in December, an undocumented Haitian man died while in custody in Delaney Hall, one day after being detained. DHS officially ruled that the man, 41 year old Jean Wilson Brutus, had died of quote “suspected natural causes.” Jean Wilson Brutus is one of nearly 50 people, that we know of, who have died in DHS custody since the start of Trump’s second term. 2025 was the deadliest year for detainees in DHS custody in 2 decades. 18 people have died in the first few months of 2026 alone, and that number will continue to rise. Detainees inside Delaney Hall have reported that they have limited access to medical care, are given their lifesaving medications at irregular intervals, and at least one person reported adverse symptoms after they were given what they believe to be the incorrect medication. On top of that, detainees and their advocates report that flu-like symptoms and COVID are rampant in the facility which does not provide detainees with sufficient bedding or any pillows, with some people forced to sleep on the floor, in poorly ventilated, cold holding cells. Literally every aspect of the very basics necessary for sustaining human life–water, food, clothing, warmth, bathroom facilities–are inadequate in Delaney Hall, providing detainees with just enough to stay alive but nothing more, and even then at least one person has died. This despite the fact that, and I need you to hear me when I say this, Delaney Hall is not a prison. Delaney Hall is not a prison. Delaney Hall is not meant to be punishment. 9 in 10 detainees in Delaney Hall are not accused of any crime. 90% of detainees in Delaney Hall are not accused of any crime. Overstaying a visa in the United States is not a crime. Staying in the US while awaiting your immigration hearing is not a crime. Seeking asylum in the United States is not a crime. The US constitutional protections of due process, against unreasonable searches and seizures, they apply to everyone, not just citizens, you don’t need a law degree to know that you just need to read the plain language of the constitution, of amendments 4, 5, 6, and 14. And those amendments apply to you EVEN IF you’ve committed a crime. Which 90% of Delaney Hall’s detainees are not even accused of doing. And yet they are imprisoned against their will, being held in punitive conditions, being denied basic rights guaranteed to them by the constitution of the United States and by international humanitarian law, rights they deserve and are guaranteed to them regardless of immigration status and even, yes, regardless of whether or not they have committed crimes.
And yet it is incredibly common in my comments section, in comments sections across the internet, in news interviews, on Fox News, everywhere, for people to both conflate criminality with immigration status as well as to assume that if someone is a criminal, as all illegal aliens are, in their mind, then they deserve whatever treatment they get. There is an entire rather large subset of the population in the United States that seems unwilling or unable to think critically about whether it is really effective or beneficial to subject human beings, whether criminal or illegal or whatever you want to call them, to inhumane treatment. But that comes down to some basic human values that you can’t really convince someone to have unless they’re willing to see immigrants as humans. To see people who have committed a crime as human. And you can’t convince someone to see the humanity in another person if they’re unwilling to. Even the language they use to describe immigrants is crafted to dehumanize them as much as possible, and it’s an ongoing project.
I was looking through Senator Cory Booker’s twitter page today to try to confirm how many times he’s visited Delaney Hall–as far as I can tell only once, despite being the senior Senator from the state of New Jersey–and in his tweet from yesterday about the Delaney Hall hunger strike, condemning the deplorable conditions in the detention center, there was a theme in the comments replying to Booker’s tweet. One of the top ones was from right wing content creator Tomi Lahren, who said “They aren’t ‘immigrants’ they are illegals and if they want to stop eating their taxpayer funded and provided meals they can have at it!” Another comment informed Booker that “news flash for ya chief, illegal aliens are not ‘immigrants.’” This illustrates a talking point that is being adopted by the right that apparently takes issue with the dignity that comes with the label “immigrant” and is trying to rewrite US law to declare that you only get the title “immigrant” if you are here legally, and everyone else is an “illegal.” This despite the fact that the Immigration and Nationality Act clearly states that an immigrant is anyone in the US who is not a citizen or national of the US and intends to reside here indefinitely. The only carve out the law provides for NON-immigrant aliens is for people like diplomats or others here on a temporary basis who still consider a different country to be their place of permanent residence. If you come to the US with the intention to reside here permanently, you are an immigrant. Your legal status is a separate issue and doesn’t impact whether or not you are called an “immigrant.” But by attempting to rebrand undocumented immigrants as not “real” immigrants, the right is trying to rewrite what the law says and also ensure that certain immigrants remain in the subhuman category, while other immigrants, you know the good ones, the white ones who came here from Europe, are afforded a different, higher status as “immigrant.” A real immigrant.
And the cruel dehumanization of immigrants in this country, all immigrants, yes even including those who don’t have proper documentation, is part of the fascist playbook to get us all to fall in line. Well, they’re not deserving of our care or attention or of humane treatment because they are subhuman, they’re illegals, not even worthy of the title of “immigrant.” So let them eat maggots. Let them drink poisoned water. Let them starve. Let their families sit out in the elements, unsure whether they’ll ever see them again. Let them be disappeared off the street, removed to countries they’ve never been to where they’ll be put in even greater danger. It’s a lot easier for everyone to look the other way if we’ve been effectively convinced that they lack humanity. They tried it with slavery. They tried it with the holocaust. They’re betting on it working again here. Which is why it’s so important to talk about what’s happening in Delaney Hall, and in detention centers across the United States, where now upwards of 70 THOUSAND human beings are being held in captivity in immigrant detention centers, most of them accused of no crime, some of them pregnant women and children and the elderly and people in need of ongoing medical care that they aren’t receiving, we can’t look away from what they’re going through, even though DHS wants us to, even though they refuse to show us inside while claiming they have nothing to hide, even though the mounting horrors are becoming so widespread and deafening that its getting normalized, the uproar over Kilmar Abrego Garcia feels distant, and people are less angry and less tuned in because it’s exhausting to be tuned in and angry all the time. And I agree you have to take breaks but we also cannot look away and go along with the dehumanization of the immigrants in this country who make this country great who add to the fabric of this country and who are human beings deserving of humane treatment whose crime is wanting better for themselves and their families.
And I want to just circle back to the fact that Senator Cory Booker has visited Delaney Hall one singular time in the last year and a half despite the fact that it is in his jurisdiction and the conditions are so abhorrent people inside are literally going on hunger strike to get attention. That is a gross abdication of his job. Senator Booker is a man who is willing to play lip service to a whole host of things while doing literally fuck all to help anyone but himself, including by taking money from AIPAC to the tune of over $800,000 just since 2025 according to Open Secrets. He’s only willing to do work that will make him look good, that will get him the sound bite or the social media clip but not the work of actually representing his constituents that he was elected to represent. The man represents everything that’s wrong with the Democratic establishment, meanwhile his colleague Senator Andy Kim has made frequent visits to Delaney Hall, along with New Jersey representatives and the governor of New Jersey. A couple of those representatives were even arrested for attempting to do their job and investigate what’s happening inside Delaney Hall last year. Representative LaMonica McIver is still fighting the federal criminal assault charges brought against her resulting from a tussle last year with ICE agents that video evidence indicates the agents may have provoked. McIver is currently pregnant and could face up to 17 years in prison for the incident. Again, she’s a sitting US representative who was attempting to exercise her right to investigate what the fuck is going on inside Delaney Hall.
Meanwhile, GEO Group, the private prison company overseeing the Delaney Hall operation has seen its stock soar by 55% over the last 6 months. And earlier this month, Trump named former GEO Group executive David Venturella as acting director of ICE, an example of the revolving door between the federal government and the private companies getting rich off our tax dollars and off the continued criminalization of immigrants and US citizens alike. And, despite SOME Congressmembers’ best efforts, they are doing so with increasingly diminished oversight. Earlier this month it was reported that Trump completely shuttered the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, which is an independent agency that operates outside the Department of Homeland Security and investigates complaints about civil rights abuses, excessive use of force, and other misconduct allegations involving ICE, CBP, and other arms of DHS. That was the agency that immigration lawyers could turn to to report mistreatment of their clients and ensure that the government was looking into those allegations. It was a means by which the government itself could say look we have this oversight, we have this independent ombudsman to investigate these things, we promise we’re mostly good and we just need to weed out the bad apples. Now even that is gone, and so immigration attorneys representing detained immigrants have no recourse when their clients complain of maggots in their food or abuse inside the immigrant detention center system, other than filing habeas petitions or bringing it to the attention of immigration judges. And the judges who are tasked with overseeing the day to day handling of immigration court cases in this country are completely overrun with cases, often seeing dozens and dozens of cases every week. And of course if the Trump regime wanted to hire more immigration judges they could, but the backlog is also the point. It gives them plausible deniability for letting immigrants languish in holding cells while their cases slowly move through the system. The overworked judges are incentivized to move as quickly as possible, to make snap decisions. With this amount of work, mistakes are bound to be made. And so at the same time as we lament the lack of due process that a lot of these immigrants are getting, some of whom are being deported without a proper hearing, with no process at all, even the ones who are managing to get inside an immigration courtroom, you have to question the level of due process that can be given in a system where the judges are scrambling to move as many people through as possible. Even claims that immigrants are being seen by immigration judges fall flat when you know that that judge just sees them as a number because they have to because there’s no other way to process the sheer quantity of cases moving through the courts. And it’s not necessarily the fault of individual immigration judges, though some are Trump appointees who have adopted the fascist dehumanization script of the far right, but for the most part it’s simply a feature of the system–even judges with the best intentions are being broken down by the weight of their caseloads. Immigration lawyers, too. Despite everyone’s best efforts, you have to question the quality of the due process and representation afforded to people when the entire system is broken. And that’s if they even get lawyers, because again immigration court is not criminal court. An immigration case is a civil matter that is handled by immigration judges who are not part of the judiciary. Your Miranda rights, the right to remain silent, to have an attorney assigned to you if you can’t afford one, that only extends to criminal cases. You are not guaranteed a lawyer if you are facing immigration court. There are children appearing before immigration judges with no family and no representation. It is a deeply, deeply broken system that is being expanded using the same private prison companies that have turned the US into a carceral state, and forcing as many people as possible to be rammed through the broken system in an attempt to completely break it down while also seeming as legitimate as possible. But in the process peoples’ human rights are being violated and there is less and less oversight into any of it.
This is why it’s so important that someone like Senator Andy Kim repeatedly shows up to the immigrant detention centers in his jurisdiction and is willing to put his bodily safety on the line to try to conduct oversight into the operation. Because he has a right to do that oversight. You or I could go out and protest but Senator Kim has oversight powers we don’t have, and the optics of a sitting senator being peppersprayed offer a really powerful check on the legitimacy of the Trump regime’s power. Which is also why it's so abhorrent that Cory Booker has done so little other than tweet a couple times to actually bring attention to the issue as a Senator from New Jersey who is one of the most well known members of Congress today. That he isn’t on the ground there daily, willing to use his power to protect the people in his jurisdiction, is an abdication of his duty to the people who elected him.
I’ll be continuing to keep an eye on the ongoing hunger strike in Delaney Hall, given the fact that it sounds like detainees were already being malnourished it's unclear how long they could go on a continued hunger strike, especially considering their access to drinking water is dependent on shipping in bottled water. The fact that people being held against their will who have committed no crimes are being subjected to this level of inhumanity is something none of us should look away from.
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And if you liked this episode, you’ll like my episode from last week about Trump’s very special DOJ slush fund.
