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Protesters opposing ICE allegedly targeted federal immigration officers with a chemical spray during a protest that erupted on Tuesday outside a Newark immigration detention facility, marking the fifth consecutive day of demonstrations.
The overnight confrontation escalated dramatically at Delaney Hall when individuals among the protestors reportedly unleashed an unknown chemical substance on federal officers as they attempted to manage the disorder, according to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
Captured on video, the intense scenes depicted groups of masked individuals, some wearing keffiyehs, clashing with numerous ICE agents. The protestors were seen blocking vehicles and creating chaos in the vicinity of the detention center.
Secretary Mullin reported that two individuals from the protest were detained on charges of assaulting, resisting, and obstructing federal officers.
“Attacking and hindering ICE law enforcement is both a crime and a felony,” he declared on X. “Anyone who assaults law enforcement will face prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.”
President Trump called the demonstrators “all paid-for protesters” during a cabinet meeting in the White House.
“These aren’t protesters. These people are fake,” he said when asked about the ongoing protests outside the facility.
Crowds had thinned by Wednesday morning, as roughly 30 armed ICE agents manned the front gate.
Delaney Hall has been a hotbed of unrest since Friday, when detainees reportedly launched a hunger and labor strike to protest conditions inside the 1,000-bed facility.
Anti-ICE protests have spiraled into growing violence in recent days, with tensions boiling over after Gov. Mikie Sherrill joined demonstrators at the facility on Monday in what DHS dismissed as a “political stunt.”
The migrants inside claim they have been served tainted food, packed into rooms without air conditioning, and had their immigration cases ignored by federal judges, the New Jersey Monitor reported.
However, DHS insists conditions inside its centers are actually maintained “higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold U.S. citizens” and denied claims of a hunger strike.
Mullin on Wednesday said that only “a handful” of detainees have been skipping meals because they’re requesting “ethnic” food.
“Well, they can go back to their country, get whatever food they want,” he said during the Wednesday cabinet meeting. “The fact is, we’re giving them the calories they want. This isn’t Holiday Inn.”
Mullin also blasted Sherill and other left Garden State pols for joining the rowdy protests on Memorial Day.
“It shows the radical left Democrats’ priorities when they decide to go out and protest a detention center where we’re housing rapists, child predators, murderers, drug dealers — and they choose Memorial Day?”