The Gestapo in New Jersey: When ICE went rogue, Democrats went limp

Just over one year ago, the mayor of New Jersey’s largest city tried to walk into an immigrant detention center to see what was happening inside. Ras Baraka was arrested for trespassing. Charged like a common loiterer. For attempting to inspect a facility that sits on poisoned ground in the heart of the state’s notorious “chemical corridor,” a place where state and local laws say no such detention center should operate.

That was May 2025. The facility is Delaney Hall, a 1,000-bed private prison run by the GEO Group under a $1 billion, 15-year contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It reopened last year after a years-long hiatus. And it has become a fortress of unchecked federal power, a place where hunger strikes are met with tear gas and elected officials are pepper-sprayed for asking questions.

Now it is May 2026. And the mask has slipped entirely.

On Memorial Day, New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat and former Navy helicopter pilot, stood outside Delaney Hall demanding entry.

She wanted to see the conditions that had driven detainees to a hunger strike now in its fourth day. Families had told her about rotten food, rancid milk, and inadequate medical care.

A pregnant woman. A diabetic 65-year-old. A high school student who just wanted to walk at graduation.

Sherrill was denied access. Denied. To a facility operating on state soil, holding human beings in a building that Newark’s lawsuit alleges lacks a valid certificate of occupancy.

She left after about an hour. Some protesters jeered. They wanted her sooner. Fair enough.

But here is where the story turns from political theater into something darker.

Hours after Sherrill departed, a convoy of ICE vehicles approached another entrance. Protesters ran to block it, fearing a transfer of hunger-striking detainees.

Agents in riot gear—most masked, many unidentifiable, a direct violation of what should be basic accountable policing standards—began shoving, dragging, and pushing. They pulled a young man by the kaffiyeh around his neck. A military-style vehicle rolled up with an agent on top, gripping a firearm pointed at peaceful demonstrators.

Then came the pepper balls. The spray. The gas.

Sen. Andy Kim, a Democrat who had been allowed inside earlier, walked into the fray trying to de-escalate. He put his arms up between the agents and the protesters.

He got gassed anyway.

“It’s just burning,” Kim said afterward. “It’s sad. It’s a sad day.”

He is not wrong. But sad is not the word. Infuriating is closer. Terrifying is also accurate. Because what happened in Newark is not an isolated incident. It is a blueprint.

The Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security has been quietly, and now not so quietly, rewriting the rules of law enforcement in America.

Masked agents. No body cameras. Administrative warrants that function like blank checks.

A January 2026 memo instructing ICE that they can enter homes without judicial warrants—a policy kept secret for eight months until whistleblowers leaked it.

The redefinition of “likely to escape” to mean anyone who might walk away while an agent fills out paperwork.

This is not immigration enforcement. This is the normalization of a secret police apparatus.

And the deaths. Five people have been shot and killed during immigration operations since the start of the second term.

Renée Good. Alex Pretti. Names that should be shouted from every statehouse step. The administration smeared them, obstructed investigations, and refused to cooperate with local authorities.

Against this backdrop, what did New Jersey’s Democratic establishment actually do?

Gov. Sherrill showed up, talked to families, left, and then released a statement saying she would “monitor the situation.”

Rep. Rob Menendez, who arrived Sunday night and stayed until morning, did manage to get inside. He heard desperation. He saw rancid milk. And then what?

Menendez is also the son of a disgraced former senator, a beneficiary of $663,000 in independent expenditures from President Trump’s biggest campaign contributors, facing a serious primary challenge one week after this protest.

“A super PAC called Think Big, funded by artificial intelligence titans, has so far spent about $662,000 to help Rep. Rob Menendez (D-N.J.) in his primary against Mussab Ali. Menendez is running anti-data center ads,” POLITICO reporter Matt Friedman writes New Jersey’s Playbook.”But do you really think the AI industry is going to spend that kind of cash for a candidate they think will go against their interests?”

In a previous campaign, Menendez received a major boost from outside spending orchestrated by Samuel Bankman-Fried, who was convicted of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy and sentenced to 25 years in prison after the collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, in November 2022.

Bankman-Fried orchestrated one of the largest financial frauds in history, stealing over $8 billion of his customers’ money.

When cryptocurrency and AI billionaires are supporting a candidate, they own him.

What Menendez has done at Delaney Hall is not leadership. That is optics.

Sen. Cory Booker was there too. And Rep. LaMonica McIver, who was indicted last year on charges of interfering with federal officers during a previous attempt to inspect Delaney Hall. She pleaded not guilty. But the pattern is unmistakable: Democrats keep getting arrested, pepper-sprayed, indicted, and denied entry—and ICE keeps operating without consequence.

The Department of Homeland Security dismissed the whole thing as a “political stunt.” Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis downplayed the hunger strike. The official statement called protesters “rioters” and insisted no one was directly struck by pepper balls, as if chemical exposure to a U.S. senator is somehow acceptable collateral damage.

Here is the truth that no press release can wash away: A privately run detention center sitting on contaminated land in New Jersey is holding human beings in conditions so bad that they have stopped eating. When their advocates and elected representatives asked to see what was happening, federal agents responded with riot gear, pepper spray, and a tank.

And the response from the party that controls the governor’s office, both U.S. Senate seats, and most of the state’s congressional delegation? A few hours of photo ops, a couple of forceful statements, and then a retreat to the SUVs.

Ras Baraka got arrested for trying to do his job a year ago. Andy Kim got gassed for trying to do his job this week. In between, four men escaped Delaney Hall during a revolt over food. In between, judges have repeatedly criticized the Trump administration for defying court orders. In between, whistleblowers have come forward with documents showing systematic constitutional violations.

And the Democrats? They go limp. They show up just long enough to get the footage, then they leave before the tear gas hits. They issue statements. They demand access. They get denied. And then they move on to the next hearing, the next fundraiser, the next primary.

The people inside Delaney Hall do not have that luxury. They are on hunger strike. They are sleeping on floors. They are drinking rancid milk. They are being held in a building that should never have been allowed to open.

This is not a “sad day” in New Jersey. It is a test. And so far, the folks who say they stand for dignity, for due process, for the rule of law—they are failing it. Not because they aren’t angry. But because anger without action is just another costume. And the masks in Newark belong to more than just the agents.