How Do You Peacefully Protest a Concentration Camp?
That’s the question I keep coming back to tonight.
Because right now, in Newark, New Jersey, there is a facility called Delaney Hall. It’s a privately run ICE detention center operated by the GEO Group — one of the largest private prison companies in the world. And what’s happening inside it should make every single one of us sick.
Detainees went on a hunger strike over worm-infested food. Families have been denied visitation for days. A sitting US Senator — Andy Kim — got pepper sprayed while doing congressional oversight. ICE pepper sprayed detainees inside their own cells for protesting the conditions. And a private prison company is collecting a check for all of it.
This has been going on for nine days.
And the response from officialdom? “Please protest peacefully.”
I need you to sit with that for a second.
The Oldest Trick in the Book
“We support your cause, just not your methods.”
They said it to civil rights protesters. They said it to labor organizers getting their skulls cracked on picket lines. They said it to every movement that dared to inconvenience power in pursuit of basic human dignity.
It is not a call for peace. It is a tool to neutralize resistance without addressing the injustice underneath it.
Last night, New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill — a Democrat — deployed state police in full riot gear to gas and disperse protesters outside Delaney Hall. Mounted units on horseback pushed people back. At least six people were arrested.
She said she did it to prevent ICE from having a pretext to escalate.
Let me translate that: a Democratic governor tear gassed people protesting a concentration camp to protect those protesters from a worse crackdown by the federal government.
That is the position we are in right now. That is how broken this is.
Who Else Showed Up
On the pro-ICE side today? Proud Boys. A PragerU commentator named Cam Higby showed up with hired security and was photographed by Getty Images pepper spraying protesters directly. No arrest reported.
Protesters blocking a road face charges. A right-wing influencer sprays people in the face and walks away.
Two systems. One country.
What’s Actually Happening Inside
Detainees are watching this from windows. People inside Delaney Hall have been pepper sprayed by staff for protesting their own conditions. They’re being denied medical care. They can’t see their families. And DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin had the audacity to say detainees weren’t eating because they wanted their “ethnic food.”
An attorney representing people inside responded: “I think they just don’t want to eat worms.”
These are human beings. They are being warehoused in inhumane conditions by a private company making money off their suffering, under a federal government that views them as subhuman, while a Democratic governor tries to thread a needle that shouldn’t exist.
So Back to My Question
How do you peacefully protest a concentration camp?
I don’t have a clean answer. I don’t think one exists. What I know is that the people outside Delaney Hall right now — the ones getting gassed and arrested — are doing something. They are showing up for people who cannot show up for themselves.
And the least the rest of us can do is pay attention.
Share this. Talk about it. Show up if you can. And if you want to keep getting this kind of coverage — the kind that doesn’t ask you to look away — subscribe at SeanBartley.substack.com.
This is what it looks like when people fight back. Don’t let them make you look away.
— Sean