More demonstrators arrested outside Delaney Hall ICE detention center in Newark

New Jersey authorities said more demonstrators were arrested outside the Delaney Hall ICE facility in Newark late Sunday when they refused to leave the area after curfew.

Attorney General Jennifer Davenport said that beginning at 8:15 p.m., people were given numerous warnings in English and Spanish to leave the area by 9 p.m. Many protesters complied, she said in a statement, but members of a group that had come to the area with helmets, shields, and gas masks did not leave and were arrested.

Her statement did not say how many people were arrested. On Monday her office referred the query to New Jersey State Police, which referred questions to Newark police, who could not immediately be contacted. The New York Post reported at least 20 people were arrested.

“We remain firmly committed to protecting the right to peaceful protest and to protecting the safety of the public,” the attorney general said in a statement issued late Sunday night. “We will continue to work with Gov. Sherrill and her administration to ensure that all people detained at Delaney Hall are treated with dignity and humanity.”

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka imposed the indefinite curfew outside the 1,000-bed detention center after a series of clashes between demonstrators and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, who were recently supplanted by state police. Baraka closed roughly a half mile around Delaney Hall from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m.

The Post reported that police fired two rounds of tear gas toward protesters on Sunday, which sent people running until about 50 demonstrators and reporters were corralled into a tight circle.

As reporters left the group, police handcuffed the remaining protesters.

New Jersey State Police earlier set up designated protest zones, relieving federal immigration officers who had clashed with demonstrators for days. Gov. Mikie Sherrill said she sent in state police to bring order outside the detention center and “to lower the temperature” as demonstrations intensified.

New Jersey State Police Lt. Col. David Sierotowicz earlier said that ICE officers agreed to stand down with state police assuming responsibility.

Delaney Hall is among hundreds of ICE detention centers across the United States, places where immigrants who have been arrested are processed for deportation. It is managed by the GEO Group, a private-prison firm, under a 15-year, $1 billion federal contract awarded last year.

Protesters have gathered outside the facility, most in support of immigrant detainees and some there for ICE, amid reports of inhumane conditions and a hunger strike inside the facility.

On Saturday evening, protesters clashed with counterprotesters from the Proud Boys extremist group, as well as with state police troopers.

Members of Eyes on ICE, a coalition of organizations that support the families of those detained, have organized the demonstrations outside Delaney Hall.

Sherrill on Sunday described the initial group of protesters as “a mix of local and out-of-state, and it often seems what we are seeing is this long-term peaceful protester.”

She said members of the group helped families of detainees understand their visitation rights and provided them with legal representation.

However, more recently, the group has morphed to include more radical protesters who come to the facility at night, Sherrill said, pushing out the more peaceful, “grassroots” group from fear of violence.

Members of the group posted on social media that mounted troopers used horses to shove them back, and footage from the scene showed protesters throwing rocks and other objects at the troopers.

The group first organized outside Delaney Hall in early May and has maintained a constant presence there, calling for the release of the people detained inside.

This article contains information from the Associated Press.