Photo by Nitish Meena on Unsplash

Don’t Get Mired In Political Fog, Just Make Delaney Hall Safe, Healthy For Prisoners

The overarching priority at Delaney Hall in Newark must be to ensure the safety and health of the imprisoned migrants, not politics, not ego.

But this is not a time for debate with right wing bigots; it is not the time for violent, left wing radicals to flex their muscles to provoke confrontations with the police. Nor is it the moment for the left to succumb to the taunts of far right, white supremacists and anti-Semites who would love nothing better than the publicity.

And most importantly, trump and the Republicans must not be allowed to twist the rally from righteous support of the health and safety of the migrants and falsely spin it in support of trump’s cruel immigration policies.

Gov. Mikie Sherill and other state representatives must immediately gain entrance to the make-shift prison to view the conditions first-hand to force the government to provide a healthy and safe environment. The lawsuit filed by the state attorney general to clear inspections at Delaney is a step but the solutions are needed now, not when the court decides on the suit.

There is no good reason that numerous state and federal lawmakers have been refused entry to inspect the prison. The only conclusion is that the government does not want the public to see the cruelty and lawlessness inside.

ICE has developed a well-earned reputation bathed in blood of violence and indiscriminate arrests. Sherill was right to replace the masked, quasi-military ICE agents with local and state police who are under direct control of the state.

On May 23, Sen. Andy Kim, D-NJ, and Rep. Rob Menendez, D-NJ, went inside the facility to speak with detainees. Kim met with a pregnant woman who said she was not receiving full obstetrics and gynecological care, and with another woman who had a miscarriage but received no care and was left to manage the miscarriage on her own.

Detainees have told relatives and advocacy groups that the water tasted metallic and undrinkable; that people were being denied medical care or necessary medications; and that diseases such as the flu or COVID-19 were spreading throughout the facility. In addition, in late May, the Department of Health received a report about a detainee taken to University Hospital with tuberculosis, a highly infectious disease.

The Enemy Reacts

Tragically, much of the anti-immigrant population who overlap with occupants of trump world simply hate people of color and could care less how they are treated in prisons, whether they are guilty or not of any crimes.

Dozens of trump supporters and a handful of members of the far right, neo-fascist Proud Boys were among those who tried to crash the ice protest.

Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-NJ, who is as loyal a trump toady as there is spoke on the right wing Newsmax media outlet. Van Drew made the dubious claim that he has visited Delaney since the protests began and found that the prisoners are being treated “very, very, very humanely.” Perhaps Van Drew’s definition of humanely is twisted.

Van Drew has been in office since 2019 and was elected as a Democrat. A year later, Van Drew voted against impeaching trump and switched parties to Republican. Van Drew later supported trump’s lies which formed the basis of his continuing, unsuccessful attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

“It’s just such a shame to see. I want to thank our good members of the New Jersey State Police, the Newark police, the folks in ICE and Homeland Security for doing their job,” Van Drew said on “Rob Schmitt Tonight.” “They’re doing the right thing. They are showing extreme caution and being very careful.”

Van Drew said without offering proof that none of the protesters are from New Jersey.

“It’s antifa. It’s [billionaire financier] George Soros,” he said. “These are people they gathered from all over the country.”

Soros is a billionaire, funder of progressive causes and a common bugaboo of the right wing and anti-Semites.

Van Drew accused Democrats of not telling the truth about actual conditions at Delaney Hall. He made Delaney Hall sound like one very comfortable country club.

“The facility is clean. It has medical care and dental care,” he said. “It has meals for those with allergies. It has treated those people, many of them, better than they were ever treated in their life. They have recreation areas, indoor and outdoor. It’s unbelievable.”

Van Drew said imprisoned immigrants who don’t like the conditions at Delaney Hall are welcome to self-deport.

“If it was so bad, these people would be wanting to leave,” he said. “They don’t want to go anywhere. Many of them have never had it so good in their life.”

Trump dismissed the anti-ICE protesters and claimed that the United States runs the “finest facilities anywhere in the world of their type.”

A post on the Department of Homeland Security Facebook page further disparaged the protests.

“It is embarrassing that New Jersey sanctuary politicians and anti-ICE rioters chose to spend their Memorial Day weekend smearing ICE law enforcement. Our ICE law enforcement will continue to work every day to remove dangerous criminal illegal aliens from New Jersey and American communities,” the page said.

Emotions are understandably white hot and the recent confrontations between protesters and the authorities may help the violent left wingers to puff up their chests and show their bona fides. In the fog of such battles, the reason for the protest is easily lost as some join out of boredom, love of struggle or some fuzzy commitment for freedom.

But violence begets violence and the potential grows for another tragedy like the January murders of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti who were protesting the treatment of immigrants when they were shot and killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis.

The focus must not turn from the innocent, imprisoned migrants to scenes of violence that will allow the government to paint the protests as being led by violent antifas, communists and Marxists. In other words, America beware, the Commies are back.

Violence will only increase government persecution while it also will cause people of good conscience to stay at home out of fear of their safety.

The right wing quickly tries to minimize and delegitimize protests like the attacks on Delaney Hall. Unfortunately, too often the left makes it easier for the right wing. Protests are not homogenous and can be hijacked by fringe groups with highly controversial ideas. These are the groups that the right wing will falsely claim as representative of anyone protesting ICE or the detentions.

At Delaney, the protesters included representatives of various communist organizations, each with their bullhorns turned up loud, beyond their numbers as they distributed far left publications like The Internationalist, Freedom Socialist and Challenge-The Revolutionary Communist Newspaper of Progressive Labor Party.

The militancy of the far left is not unlike the divisions in the civil rights movement that grew among those like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who supported peaceful protests, and others who saw violence as the way to destroy the barriers of freedom.

Red Baiting

When many Americans hear the words “communist” they equate it with the world dominance once put forward by the former Soviet Union. Historically, trump and the Republican Party have leaned on hyperbole, red baiting and dog whistles of Marxism, communism and socialism as threatening to the American way.

They use their false allegations to denigrate various movements from ICE protests to the nationwide demonstrations after the murder of George Floyd. It doesn’t take more than a whiff of communism to rile up most Republicans, especially the MAGA contingency.

To trump and his minions, “communist” equates to radical left and “socialist” means any opponent. Trump has used the “Communist” label against Antifa, Democratic politicians and journalists. He has labeled as socialists, all centrists, moderates and anyone supporting welfare programs.

In the trump world, a “socialist” is anyone who favors climate policy, student debt relief, universal healthcare and corporate regulations. Communists can be identified by their support of public health measures, tech companies, universities and protest movements or so the right wing claims.

One notable dog whistle came on June 19, 2023. After trump was arraigned on federal charges, he lashed out at President Joe Biden and Democrats in claiming he was persecuted by “Marxists” and “Communists.” After pleading not guilty in federal court, trump told a crowd of supporters that Biden, “together with a band of his closest thugs, misfits and Marxists, tried to destroy American democracy.”

“If the communists get away with this, it won’t stop with me,” trump threatened. He has said that Biden’s America could soon become a “third world Marxist regime” or a “tyrannical Marxist nation.”

Trump probably knows next to nothing about Karl Marx and Marxism but he may have more in common with another Marx. Groucho Marx played Professor Quincy Wagstaff, in the 1932 movie “Horse Feathers” and sang:

“Your proposition may be good But let’s have one thing understood: Whatever it is, I’m against it And even when you’ve changed it or condensed it I’m against it.”

Sounds pretty Trumpian.

The right wing has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that protests particularly against ICE, are being organized and funded by outside groups, namely Antifa, a decentralized campaign against fascism.

Mike Crispi, a right wing talk show host, is chairman of America First Republicans of NJ which organized a counter, pro-ICE rally outside of Delaney Hall. After attending the protest, Crispi had a quick fact-challenged critique.

“LIVE FROM DELANEY HALL! Antifa has left a disgusting MESS here! These people don’t value human life or our country whatsoever,” Crispi posted. “We are not ceding this ground to Mikie Sherrill and Andy Kim for them to score cheap political points. We are standing for law and order and the Trump immigration agenda that millions of New Jerseyans voted for.”

One of the more notable anti-ICE protesters at Delaney Hall was Hasan Piker, a 34-year-old left wing political commentator with 3.1 million Twitch followers and 1.87 million subscribers on his You Tube channel. Piker has been most commonly identified as a leftist, a socialist, and a Marxist. He has advocated for workplace democracy, universal health care, LGBTQ+ rights, anti-Zionism and gun control.

In the 2025 New York City mayoral race, Piker expressed support for Zohran Mamdani, and Mamdani appeared on Piker’s stream. During the 2026 Democratic Party primaries in Michigan, Piker campaigned for Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed.

Socialism and communism have significant support among young people. A recent survey by the Cato Institute and YouGov showed that 62 percent of Americans aged 18–29 say they hold a “favorable view” of socialism, and 34 percent say the same of communism.

Young people, age 18 to 29, also are more prone to violence than other age groups. The Kettering Foundation/Gallup Democracy for All Project found that while most Americans said it is “never OK” to use violence to achieve a political goal, 16 percent, mostly between 18 and 29, said it is “sometimes OK.”

The young people have no institutional memory of the millions murdered by Stalin and Mao. Today’s young people would be wise to heed the warning of philosopher George Santayan who said famously in 1905: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

And for those who scream for the end of democracy, it’s a bet that few young people are familiar with a comment from Winston Churchill in 1947, “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried.”

The right wing politicians and their supporters casually label opponents as Marxist or communist, labels that function as political shorthand for “bad,” “un‑American” or “extreme.” The right wing commonly links so-called Marxists or communists to China, Cuba, Venezuela, The Soviet Union and Mao, Lenin, or Castro.

But it is a good bet that those same politicians could care less that they know little about Marxism.

Marxism is a social, political, and economic philosophy developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It analyzes class struggle, critiques capitalism, and predicts that conflict between workers (proletariat) and owners (bourgeoisie) will eventually lead to a new social order.

Marxism claims that capitalism exploits workers by extracting “surplus value”; that history progresses through class conflict; a worker‑led revolution is likely; and that after capitalism collapses, society transitions first to socialism, then eventually to communism.

Socialism is an economic and political system emphasizing public or social ownership of resources and reducing inequality. It allows for varying degrees of markets and private property depending on the version. Socialism promotes public or cooperative ownership of major industries; and democratic control over economic decisions; strong social welfare systems (universal healthcare, education, workers’ rights).

“Socialist” is often another word for Social Security; Medicare; public schools; student loan forgiveness; and universal healthcare proposals, all derided by the far right.

Communism is a political and economic ideology that aims for a classless, stateless society with collective ownership of all property. Key features include no private property; no social classes; no state; distribution based on need, not markets; and full communal control of production and resources.

No country has ever reached Marx’s envisioned stateless, classless communism. Real‑world “communist states” like Russia, China and North Korea are better described as authoritarian socialist states claiming Marxist inspiration.

There also is no major socialist party in the US and no communist party with political power.