Tangle - Anti-ICE protests in New Jersey.

Episode Date: June 9, 2026

In recent weeks, federal and state law enforcement officials have clashed with protesters gathering outside Delaney Hall, a federal immigration detention center in Newark, New Jersey. At least 90 people have been arrested over the course of the protests, including 61 on the night of Sunday, May 31, on charges including assaulting federal officers, disorderly conduct, rioting and resisting arrest. The demonstrators allege poor treatment of detainees, which federal immigration officials deny.Ad-free podcasts are here!To listen to this podcast ad-free, and to enjoy our subscriber only premium content, go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!We’re coming to the stage!In 10 days, Isaac and a panel of sharp thinkers are coming to West Virginia to discuss the societal effects of artificial intelligence. They’ll tackle questions like, What would happen if AI disappeared today vs. five years from now? Who makes a stronger case between the cynics and the optimists? Could we ban AI even if we wanted to? It’ll be a scintillating chat, and you can be in the room where it’s happening if you get your tickets now.You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠ and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the survey: Are you concerned about conditions at immigration detention centers? Let us know.Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast written by: Isaac Saul and audio edited and mixed by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul. It's Tuesday, June 9th, and I'm going to resist the urge to talk about the officiating in the Spurs versus Nick's game last night. Worse than bad NBA finals officiating, though, is professional. sports teams betting against themselves on prediction markets, which is now a thing we have to deal with. A Spanish La Liga soccer club reportedly placed a multi-million dollar bet against itself in a game where if it had lost, they would have been knocked down to a lower-tier league, which would have

meant millions of lost revenue. They basically created an insurance policy for themselves and ended up squeaking by one-nothing to stay in La Liga, which is a reminder why you should never bet against yourself or something. Anyway, today we're diving into a local gone national story, the Delaney Hall Immigration Detention Center, which is actually not a far drive from where I'm sitting right now in my offices in New Jersey. Plus, a reader asks a question about voting and a brand new press pass sitting in your inbox and about to be in your podcast feed here in the next couple hours. Before that, though, we've got this podcast protests at Delaney Hall.

I'm on the mic today with senior editor Will Kayback. I'm going to pass it over to him, and I'll be back for my take. Thanks, Isaac. All right, let's get into today's quick hits. Number one, Iran and Israel said they had ceased attacks on one another after several rounds of airstrikes. However, Iran said it would resume attacks if Israel continues strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Separately, U.S. Central Command said that a U.S. helicopter crashed near the Strait of Hormuz. Both crew members on the helicopter were rescued, and the cause of the crash is under investigation. Number two, the Justice Department filed cases seeking to denaturalize 17 people who immigrated to the United States and became naturalized citizens, alleging that they concealed criminal records or committed fraud one applying for citizenship. Number three, a federal judge struck down President Donald Trump's $100,000 fee for H-1B visa recipients. finding that the fee amounted to an illegal tax that bypassed Congress. The maximum H-1B visa fee was previously $5,000.

Number four, the Agriculture Department announced that three new cases of New World Screw Worm have been confirmed in animals in the U.S., including the first case outside of Texas. The total number of confirmed cases in the U.S. is now five. And finally, number five, Vice President J.D. Vance referred allegations against Minnesota Governor Tim Walts and State Attorney General Keith Ellison, both Democrats, to the Justice Department's fraud division, seeking a criminal investigation into their handling of alleged social services fraud in the state. Another intense showdown outside Delaney Hall Saturday,

as ICE agents stormed out with pepperball guns and spray, pushing back protesters who were blocking vehicles from entering the facility. It's almost like where I wore out here. They're treating this like it's a lot. battlefield almost. That tension follows mayhem Friday when protesters were caught on camera kicking and smashing cars belonging to geo-group employees. At least four people were arrested, including a man from Seattle, seen snapping windshield wipers, and a person was struck by a car leaving the facility. It all came just one day after Mayor Ross Paraca announced the city

would scale back its local police presence, a decision that's dividing Newark Residence. In recent weeks, federal and state law enforcement officials have clashed with protesters gathering outside Delaney Hall, a federal immigration detention center in Newark, New Jersey. At least 90 people have been arrested over the course of the protests, including 61 on the night of Sunday, May 31st. Those demonstrating at the facility alleged poor treatment of detainees, which federal immigration officials have denied. In February 2025, the federal government entered a 15th. year $1 billion contract with the GEO Group, a private prison and mental health facility operator, to reopen Delaney Hall, which had been operating as a halfway house since 2017. The facility has a permitted capacity of nearly 1,200 beds for detainees, making it one of the

largest detention centers on the East Coast, and it has housed a daily average of 891 detainees as of April 2, 26. Since its reopening, Delaney Hall has faced several public controversies, including ongoing accusations of poor living conditions, the high-profile arrest of Newark-Mayer Ross Baraka outside the facility in May 2025, the escape of four detainees in June 2025, and the death of one detainee in December 2025. On May 22nd, Delaney Hall detainees reportedly began a hunger and labor strike

to protest poor living conditions. Shortly afterward, immigration advocacy groups began organizing demonstrations outside of the facility. Tensions between demonstrators and federal officials escalated on May 25th, when protesters attempted to block the rumored transfer of one detainee to another facility. Senator Andy Kim, a Democrat of New Jersey, who was in attendance and had publicly criticized Delaney Hall's conditions, was caught in pepper spray at one point during the encounter. In the week since, protesters have been arrested on. charges, including rioting and failure to disperse.

Democratic state officials have sharply criticized immigration and customs enforcement's oversight of Delaney Hall, including its alleged lack of transparency on the conditions for detainees. On June 2nd, New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport, a Democrat, filed a lawsuit against Geo Group, requesting that the company allow the New Jersey Department of Health to inspect the facility. New Jersey Governor Mickey Sherrill, also a Democrat, visited Delaney Hall on Monday, though she criticized the, quote, limited tour that she received. Quote, I was not allowed to meet or speak directly with the detainees, which continues to raise serious questions about the real conditions of the facility

and the treatment of those held there, end quote, Cheryl said. The Department of Homeland Security has denied that Delaney Hall detainees are facing poor living conditions or conducting a hunger strike, and criticize politicians and activists for spreading false claims and endangering ICE officers at the facility. Quote, these types of smears are inciting violent riots outside the ice facility in New Jersey. DHS acting assistant secretary Lauren Biss said in a statement, detainees are provided three meals a day, medical care, and receive full due process. Today we're going to get into what the left, right, and New Jersey writers are saying about the ongoing protests at Delaney Hall.

And then executive editor Isaac Saul will give his take. We'll be right back after this quick break. Here's what the left is saying. The left criticizes Delaney Hall's detainment practices, arguing they violate detainees' rights. Some say that the recent protests mark a shift in strategy against deportations. In balls and strikes, Mediba K. Denny said, the strike exposes a massive 13th Amendment crisis.

forcing immigrant detainees to work for their captors isn't just exploitative. It's unconstitutional. The 13th Amendment explicitly prohibits slavery and indentured servitude, except as, quote, a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, end quote. But immigration detention is a form of civil confinement. People held in detention centers are simply waiting behind bars for the resolution of their immigration cases. This is punitive in practice but not in law, as they are incarcerated but not in prison. The strike at Delaney Hall is not an isolated incident. In recent weeks, hundreds of other immigration detainees across the country have participated in similar strikes. Since re-entering the White House, President Trump has waged an aggressive campaign to detain and deport people of color,

building more detention infrastructure, arresting more people, and releasing fewer. and as the immigration detention center population grows, so too does the nation's 13th Amendment crisis. In The Guardian, Moira Donagan argued the protests are different in kind. The protests outside Delaney Hall in New Jersey evoke the street clashes in Minneapolis earlier this year. But the Delaney Hall uprising is different in kind because it represents an escalation of organizing and resistance by imprisoned immigrants themselves. They are not relying on risks taken by citizens and permanent residents who have more freedom because they are less easy to deport. Instead, they are taking their cause upon themselves.

In this sense, they represent a maturation of the movement to resist the federal government's mass deportation machine, the activation and radicalization of the most vulnerable. Will it work? Well, that might be up to those of us on the outside. Violence is already allegedly ongoing inside Delaney Hall, where the organized strikers, after all, have nowhere to run. The immigrant's courage is matched only by the severity of their limited options.

Ultimately, the pressure for change will have to come from the outside. Now here's what the right is saying. The right says protesters have sparked violence and threatened public safety. Some accuse the left of spreading misleading information about Delaney Hall. The Washington Times editorial board called the protests a siege. Clearly, the agitators want another Minneapolis, where riots against immigration and customs enforcement led to two accidental deaths. Democrats and their media allies had a field day with those tragedies, indicting what they called a, quote, rogue agency. For the left, enforcing federal immigration law

is a provocation. In Newark, agitators went out of their way to provoke an ICE response. Night after night, they have clashed with agents and police sent to enforce a curfew. lately they have upped the ante. One ICE officer was bitten on the arm. Others were punched and kicked. Another protester screamed at an agent that he would kill him, his wife, and his family. The man was identified by facial recognition

and arrested by the FBI. Those being held at Delaney Hall include murderers, rapists, and pedophiles. Or to Democratic politicians, quote, our neighbors. At times, the public has been skeptical of ICE tactics, but anarchy in the streets is changing things. In Fox News, David Marcus said Democrats are spreading blatant lies. Democratic elected officials and far-left agitators have teamed up in the past week to manufacture a crisis at Delaney Hall,

and it is a conflagration fueled almost entirely by blatant lies. Perhaps the worst of these lies, because it is a direct smear against law enforcement, is the absurd idea, floated by Governor Mickey Sherrill, that ICE and its agents actually want to be attacked by agitated. to use it as a pretext for a larger presence in Newark. Does Cheryl think these agents want to be bitten? Ultimately, the purpose of all these lies above is to support this one. More and more Democrats insist that ICE must be shut down, and just as in Minnesota, are building a case to simply not enforce our immigration laws at all.

Notice that these Democrats never offer a supposedly more humane way to enforce the democratically enacted federal laws on immigration, and it is increasingly clear that their desire is simply not to enforce them at all. And now here's what New Jersey writers are saying. Some in New Jersey compare the detention center to past mechanisms of forced labor. Others criticize protesters for ineffective strategy. In the New Jersey Herald, Michael Gotsman said, Delaney Hall is a moral stain on New Jersey.

People who have not been convicted of crimes, people who are often being held for civil immigration proceedings, not criminal sentences, are allegedly cleaning facilities, performing kitchen work, and maintaining operations for pennies an hour, while a private corporation profits from keeping labor costs near zero. That may satisfy the technical definitions buried inside detention contracts and federal loopholes. But morally, what exactly should we call it? America has a long and ugly history of exploiting captive labor. We should be extremely cautious whenever incarcerated or detained populations become a source of cheap labor benefiting private entities.

That concern becomes even more urgent when many detainees are still awaiting hearings, seeking asylum or fighting deportation cases. These are human beings with constitutional rights and human dignity, not inventory on a balance sheet. And history teaches us that systems built on dehumanization rarely stop where they begin. In North Jersey.com, Alex Nussbaum asked, was the Delaney Hall chaos fueled by cops or outside agitators? On news sites and social media accounts, the public saw protesters clad in black, faces masked, screaming and cursing at law enforcement,

shouting through bullhorns inches from officers' faces. Governor Cheryl has called for Delaney Hall's closure, but also warned of, quote, people coming from out of state to create chaos and dangerous situation. end quote. Progressive activists see it over the reference. They wondered why clashes outside the facility were suddenly getting media attention when they'd spent over a year trying to call attention to callous conditions inside its walls. So which Delaney Hall narrative is the right one? Eyewitnesses accounts from demonstrators as well as from two North Jersey.com journalists

paint a picture of a crowd that, yes, was angry, but which was mainly fleeing from or reacting to heavy-handed measures deployed by state police. But clearly, some protesters came ready for a fight, if not looking for one. Images tell a powerful story, one that could overwhelm the one that immigration advocates have about Delaney. It is a mistake that the movement will keep on repeating if it can't focus its anger with discipline. All right, that is it for what the left, right, and New Jersey writers are saying. So I'm going to pass it back over to Isaac Saul for his take. Isaac, over to you.

All right, that is it for the left and the writer saying, which brings us to my take. One of the most frustrating things about these protests versus cop stories is how quickly the central issue gets swallowed up by the national press. To remind everyone, the story at Delaney Hall did not start in late May with a hunger strike or when protesters first clash with police or when a New Jersey senator was caught in a mist of pepper spray while trying to mediate a dispute.

This story has been bubbling up for more than a year, and even years before that. Flaney Hall was an immigration detention center from 2011 to 2017, then became a drug rehabilitation center and halfway house. It only became a private detention center again in 2025, after a New Jersey law prohibiting local jails and private facilities from signing new or renewed contracts to operate federal immigration detention centers was struck down in 2023. Many in northern New Jersey consider Delaney Hall a blemish on the state. Voters and residents don't want immigrants being held in detention centers in their backyard, in concrete lots in a snarl of highways outside the Newark Airport,

where the detention center is located, is a poster child for neglect, failed redevelopment, and industrial pollution. Partisan bickering has distracted from the fundamental question here. Are the immigrants at these centers being treated well, or even more baseline, is this what we want to do with immigrants who are allegedly here illegally? Remember, Delaney Hall is not a prison. Over 10,000 people were detained at the facility between May of 2025 and March of 26. A large share are accused of being in the country without authorization, either coming to the U.S. illegally or overstaying visas, which would obviously be deportable offenses.

But many are legal residents or visa holders. Some are asylum seekers. More than the 70% have no criminal record, and only 12% have criminal convictions. The rest are accused of crimes that have yet to be adjudicated. These allegations about what's happening inside the detention center are pretty straightforward. The facility is overcrowded, detainees are being fed, spoiled food, illnesses are breaking out and not being treated adequately, and some detainees are being denied prescribed medication. Many of these detainees are likely legal residents or longtime residents of the United States, and some said they feel kidnapped. Hunger-striking detainees also say they've been retaliated against and small slights like officers restricting TV access because the news was showing protesters or larger punishments like halting visitation hours have all been reported.

In defense against the allegations of poor living conditions, the federal government and conservative pundits have said that the facilities are up to snuff. As legal commentator Jonathan Turley wrote, The problem with these allegations is an actual federal inspection that found the facility to be in complete. with virtually every standard, end quote. Turley was referencing a Fox News story about an unclassified investigation into the facility that the outlet exclusively obtained, and which is now public. Fox News reported that in August 2025, the DHS Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, found the facility in compliance with 17 of 22 standards,

and the violations were for issues like ice buildup in freezers or not recording suicide checks for a sufficient amount of time. Turley and Fox are saying that New Jersey Governor Mikey Sherrill and Democratic protesters are turning this molehill into a mountain. This sounds like a reasonable defense, but it's actually a smokescreen. First, the inspection happened last August, nearly a year ago. The report makes no mention of the hunger strikes that are now central to this story because there were no hunger strikes for two days last August. It does cite infractions for environmental health and safety and food service, two claims that are still central to the protests.

More to the point, reports about the worsened conditions really ramped up over the last few months, starting when the detention center's average daily population peaked in December. Second, federal inspections rarely find anything but acceptable conditions. The Office of Detention Oversight rated facilities acceptable or above in 238 out of 241 inspections, despite also finding issues with water quality or food safety. One El Paso Center had 49 deficiencies, citing excessive use of force, disease, and other unsafe conditions, yet the ODO still gave the camp an acceptable adequate rating and recommended ICE work with the new contractor to resolve outstanding deficiencies. This pattern drew a critical report from the government accountability office last year,

which suggested that the inspection programs were unhelpful and that DHS and ICE needed to reform them. Detention centers are often given advance notice of a coming insuffer. inspection, which makes violations like those found at Delaney Hall actually quite rare. For example, one of ICE's private inspection contractors, Nakamoto, has a 40 standard framework per inspection, yet only 18 ice facilities have ever failed to meet even a single standard, and 17 of the 18 failed just one. One ice official said the inspections are, quote, very, very difficult to fail, end quote, useless. So that the facility is meeting some federal standards could just as easily be indictment of those standards as proof of its humane conditions. Again, these facilities are not

prisons. They are not supposed to be punitive. They are supposed to serve an administrative function to house people while immigration cases play out. All of this brings me back to my overarching position on immigration in our country. Allowing unchecked illegal immigration is a humanitarian disaster of its own. Many of these migrants are sitting in what is effectively a prison because our system is so backlogged that we cannot adjudicate and process their immigration claims in anything close to a timely fashion. This is why I credit Trump for reducing illegal immigration at the border, and it's why I criticize him and Congress for not taking advantage of this moment with actual systemic reform to solve crises like this one. Another interesting and under-discussed

angle on this story is the peculiar alignment between some on-the-ground protesters and the conservative pundits above. Having spoken to a handful of people who were involved in the protests over the last year, including a few neighbors of mine in North Jersey, a lot of people are asking, who are these agitators? From my conversations, I've observed that the typical Delaney Hall protesters are not some rioters and gas masks and clad in all black. They're church members, community organizers, teachers, parents, people in Newark and from the surrounding communities who have been demonstrating for more than a year. I spoke to one family friend who got involved through a group he went to Nicaragua with a few years ago. He said they started out by donating clothes

to family members of the detainees so they can meet the visitation guidelines of the facility. Some visitors were being turned away for showing up in torn jeans. That turned into donating diapers, food, full sets of clothes and medical supplies to detainees' families. Now that the facility has been upended by police clashes, these well-intentioned on-the-ground volunteers, people looking out for families without their husbands or fathers who provided a primary source of income are actually being shut out by confrontational protests and the overwhelming police presence. The sick irony of the whole thing is that while the clashes with police have raised national awareness about Delaney Hall, it's also hampered the local efforts to actually deliver aid.

It's no coincidence that Cheryl has accused outside protesters of coming in and causing a mess, comments that upset some liberal commentators but echoed what volunteers have said to me. Ultimately, the Delaney Hall story is not about law enforcement banging heads with protesters, and it's not about a senator getting pepper sprayed. It's about the reality that we're putting people in what are effectively prisons who have not been accused or convicted of crimes that require incarceration. It's about government accountability that's hard to trust, a broken immigration system we refuse to fix, and our desperate need to find the balance between enforcing the law and treating people, whether they're here illegally or legally with some basic humanity.

We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answer. This one's from Isabel in Milo, Iowa. Isabel said, I have a question for you all. I will be a first-time voter this fall, and I don't even know where to begin. What are we voting for? How do we know where to vote and so on? The process feels so overwhelming and no one seems to want to talk about it when I ask.

please let me know what you think. First off, congratulations on taking the steps towards casting your first ballot. We are big proponents of voting, even though the process can be confusing. If you can mentally categorize the elections and what you have to do to participate in them, it becomes a lot clearer. In broad strokes, our government is broken down into three levels, federal, state, and local, which includes county, city, and municipal governments. Then almost every election has two phases.

the primary election when voters decide on the eventual candidates and the general election when those candidates compete against each other. There are some exceptions and complications to that. Each state runs its primary process differently. Some races don't have primaries and ballot initiatives happen outside the primary system entirely, letting voters decide on issues themselves, like recent measures to allow for mid-decade redistricting that California and Virginia put to public votes. But if you have this in your head, you've got 99% of it.

three levels of election and two steps of the process. So how do you make sure you can vote? In most states, you can register to vote and choose your political affiliation when you get a driver's license. You can also go online to register to vote in your state. Iowa, like most states, runs a site where you can check your voter registration and sign up. Whether or not you participated in Iowa's primaries, you'll still be able to vote in the general election. You should also consider registering to participate in the presidential primaries. Iowa has a special role in that process.

Finally, federal elections and most state elections fall on the first Tuesday in November in every even-numbered year, again, with some exceptions. The presidential election comes every four years. Local and special elections may vary, and you can see what's on your ballot this year on websites like Vote 411 or Ballotpedia, and your states and municipalities website usually makes this information accessible, too. I very much hope you learn about the candidates and punch your ballot this November, and thanks for this really fundamental 101 voting question. I appreciate it. All right, with that,

I'm going to send it back to Will for the rest of the pod, and I'll see you guys tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Thanks, Isaac. All right, Will here back to read our concluding sections, starting off with a deeper look into today's main topic. Delaney Hall, originally named after a prominent addiction expert nutritionist and author Geraldine O. Delaney, has shifted owners and purposes several times since its opening in 2000. In its early years, the facility was a halfway house for individuals transitioning back into society

from stays and other facilities for minor offenses. From 2011 to 2017, private prison company, the GEO Group, ran Delaney Hall as an immigration detention center for unauthorized immigrants with and without criminal convictions. Nearly four decades after Gio Group was awarded its first detention center contract,

It has become one of the country's two largest prison operators, public or private, overseeing 51 facilities and processing centers with roughly 62,000 bed capacity. Private prison's house over 90% of the United States's detained immigrant population, according to the most recent ICE data from August 23, which is up from 79% in 2021. In 2023, President Joe Biden's Department of Homeland Security sent out a request for information. on possible detention sites in the Newark area. And Geo Group proposed Delaney Hall, which had returned to being a halfway house after the company lost its contract for the facility in 2017. After a protracted legal battle,

ICE signed a 15-year contract with Geo Group on February 26, 2025. And the contract is set to expire on February 29th, 2040. And finally, here is today's Have a Nice Day story. For more than 300 years, New Zealand sea lions were gone from the mainland, hunted to extinction on the coast, and pushed to remote sub-anarctic islands so far south that the species barely survived.

Then, in 1994, a single female wandered back to Dunedin, a town on New Zealand's Otago coast, to give birth to a pup. Researchers called her mum. She returned for two decades, raising 11 pups and founding a matchline of roughly 20 Danidin females, who now give birth under campground cribs, herd surfers, and occasionally push through cafe doors to investigate indoor pools. Quote, I just want to see them thrive, Jordana White of the New Zealand Sea Lion Trust said,

I want to see them be our neighbors for the long term. A bronze statue of Mum now stands at St. Clair Beach. All right, that is it for today's edition. Hope you have a great day, and we will be back with you tomorrow. Until then, Peace. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Wall.

Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kayback and associate editors Audrey Moorhead, Lindsay Canuth, and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at retangle.com.