Four detainees at Newark ICE facility are missing, senior officials say
The detainees were being held at the Delaney Hall facility in Newark, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been holding individuals who are facing possible deportation. The four people were unaccounted for Thursday night, and federal authorities were looking into whether they were still on the grounds of the facility, or had somehow escaped, senior officials said.
Chopper 4 was over the scene Thursday afternoon showing law enforcement and ICE agents canvassing the area.
The wife of one detainee told NBC New York she rushed over to Delaney Hall after she got a call from her husband about a lockdown in his pod and a protest about inhumane conditions at the detention center. The wife of that detainee said she was worried about her husband's safety.
A search was ongoing.
Local and state authorities were notified of the missing detainees, and some additional resources were called in to assist with the situation, according to the senior officials.
Delaney Hall made headlines in May after protests broke out at the 1,000-bed, privately owned facility.
Democratic U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver was charged in a criminal complaint with two assault charges stemming from a May 9 visit to the center. She was indicted on Tuesday; The indictment includes three counts of assaulting, resisting, impeding and interfering with federal officials.
By law, members of Congress are authorized to go into federal immigration facilities as part of their oversight powers, even without notice. Congress passed a 2019 appropriations bill that spelled out the authority.
McIver said in a statement that she had 'serious concerns about the reports of abusive circumstances at the facility,' and that her office had reached out to ICE for answers.
At the same visit that resulted in McIver's charges, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested on a trespassing charge, which was later dropped. Baraka later filed a lawsuit against acting U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba over what he said was a malicious prosecution.
In a statement, Baraka expressed concern for what had transpired at Delaney Hall on Thursday, 'ranging from withholding food and poor treatment, to uprising and escaped detainees.'
The mayor went on to say the situation 'lacks sufficient oversight of every basic detail — including local zoning laws and fundamental constitutional rights. This is why city officials and our congressional delegation need to be allowed entry to observe and monitor, any why private prisons pose a very real problem to our state and its constitution...We must put an end to this chaos and not allow this operation to continue unchecked.'
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The Independent
18 minutes ago
- The Independent
Terrifying moment dad pleads with ICE agents to let his child out of the car at daycare before they arrest him
Shocking video captured the moment immigration officers detained an Oregon father as he was dropping his young child off at daycare - and he pleaded for them to let the child out before taking him into custody for deportation. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stopped Mahdi Khanbabazadeh on July 15 while he was driving his child to Guidepost Montessori school in Beaverton, a suburb of Portland. The alarming footage, obtained by Oregon Public Broadcasting, shows the 38-year-old chiropractor asking ICE agents to 'wait for three minutes' because 'there is a baby in the car.' After the child was removed from the car, ICE officers can be seen cracking open the driver's side window. In the final clip, taken by a witness, the onlooker can be heard exclaiming: 'This is not OK, and no one here will identify themselves to me,' as masked agents handcuff Khanbabazadeh and take him away. Khanbabazadeh, a citizen of Iran, entered the U.S. on a student visa, which ICE claims he overstayed. Meanwhile, his family says he is married to a citizen and has already applied and interviewed for a green card. The clips, three taken on a dashcam and one by a witness, were provided to Oregon Public Broadcasting by Khanbabazadeh's family and authenticated by the outlet. Khanbabazadeh's arrest marks the first by ICE outside an Oregon school, as until earlier this year, federal policy prohibited immigration officials from making arrests near certain locations, including schools, houses of worship and hospitals. The incident began around 8:17 a.m. as Khanbabazadeh was in the car with his child in the backseat and pulled over by cops, according to the video's timestamp. 'Daddy, police!' the child exclaims from the back as officers tell Khanbabazadeh to roll his window down further. 'Yeah, that's police,' Khanbabazadeh replies while grabbing his identification for the agents and telling them he is headed to his child's day care. The cops let him continue to the school, where they again approached the car. A second clip, recorded at 8:32 a.m. in the daycare's parking lot, shows the father pleading with officers to hold off on their arrest as he waits for someone to pick up his child. Khanbabazadeh tells the youngster that mom is on the way. 'There is a baby in the car,' he says. 'Is it hard to wait for three minutes?' Another dashcam clip captured ICE officers smashing the driver's side window of the car after Khanbabazadeh's child had gotten out. The dad tells agents he is getting out, and one officer replies: 'We told you three times. Unbuckle your seat belt and step out of the car.' The final clip, taken by a witness, shows Khanbabazadeh standing next to a black SUV being handcuffed and led away by ICE officers, some of whom are wearing masks. Khanbabazadeh is currently being held at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, though his family is pressing for his release from the facility. ICE did not immediately return a request for comment from The Independent. In a press release the day after the arrest, ICE stated it initially attempted to arrest Khanbabazadeh during a traffic stop, but decided to allow him to drop his son off at preschool first. 'Officers allowed him to proceed to the daycare parking lot where he stopped cooperating, resisted arrest and refused to exit his vehicle, resulting in ICE officers making entry by breaking one of the windows to complete the arrest,' a spokesperson for ICE said. The horrifying incident left the local community rattled, especially parents at Guidepost Montessori School who witnessed the arrest. Randy Kornfield was dropping his grandchild off at school at the time of the arrest and saw agents get into a tense exchange with a teacher who had asked them to identify themselves. He described the arrest as 'heartless,' to Oregon Public Broadcasting. Other parents also expressed their concerns after witnessing the upsetting arrest of a fellow parent. 'I feel like a day care, which is where young children are taken care of, should be a safe place,' Natalie Berning said after dropping off her daughter at the Montessori in Beaverton Friday morning. 'Not only is it traumatizing for the family, it's traumatizing for all the other children as well.' Kellie Burns, who has two children attending the preschool, said her husband was there and heard the glass shatter. 'More than anything, we want to express how unnecessarily violent and inhumane this was,' she said. 'Everyone felt helpless. Everyone was scared.' Guidepost Global Education, which oversees the Montessori school, called the incident 'deeply upsetting.' 'We understand that this incident raises broader questions about how law enforcement actions intersect with school environments,' CEO Maris Mendes said in a statement. 'It is not lost on us how frightening and confusing this experience may have been for those involved — especially for the young children who may have witnessed it while arriving at school with their parents.'
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Joe Rogan anoints a new progressive star – can James Talarico triumph in Texas?
In late May, four of Texas's top Democrats convened on Zoom to strategize about the 2026 election. The upcoming Republican primary battle for Senate pits incumbent senator John Cornyn against the state's more right-leaning attorney general, Ken Paxton, and is expected to be bruising – greasing the skids for a potential Democratic pickup. With governor, attorney general and lieutenant governor also in play, the question the liberal quartet aimed to answer was whether they might divvy up these contests, thereby avoiding a contentious primary of their own. On the call were three fixtures of Lone Star Democratic politics: Beto O'Rourke, Colin Allred and Representative Joaquin Castro. Less well-known was the fourth man, a 36-year-old member of the state's house of representatives from Austin's district 50 named James Talarico. A former middle-school language arts teacher and aspiring Presbyterian minister with the earnest demeanor and yearbook-ready countenance of a young Ron Howard, Talarico had begun his political career in 2018, flipping a swing district to become the youngest member of the house. A good bit greener than his colleagues, Talarico seemed an unlikely aspirant for the Senate run. Then along came Joe Rogan. The world's most influential podcast host had learned of Talarico from comedian Brian Simpson, who had been awestruck by a viral clip of the state senator taking a Republican colleague to task for her 'idolatrous' bill forcing public schools to display the Ten Commandments. A producer reached out, and within a few weeks the virtually unknown official was stepping into Rogan's Austin studio to offer his gloss on the radical teachings of Jesus. If the conversation was friendly – about two hours in, Rogan was practically begging Talarico to run for president – the reviews from Rogan's right-leaning, MMA-loving fanboys were less so. Many took particular issue with Talarico's reading of the Bible as arguably pro-choice or at least ambivalent about abortion. Even so, Daniel had entered the lion's den and held his own. Within hours of the show's airing, Politico was enthusing that 'Joe Rogan's Latest Guest Might Turn Texas Blue' and Talarico's beaming choirboy mug was front and center on the Drudge Report. 'I learned this when I flipped the Trump district at the beginning of my career,' Talarico said. 'It's almost like asking someone on a date, or any relationship in your life – you have to put effort into it. If we're not going to make the effort to show up in these places where people are, then we can't be surprised when they don't make the effort to get off the couch and vote for us.' The week marked a notable turnaround for a politician who just a few years ago hit what he calls his political 'rock bottom'. It was the fall of 2021, a year that had begun with the January 6 insurrection and a catastrophic winter storm that killed hundreds of Texans. Meanwhile, 'Maga' was ascendant in the Lone Star state. Officials rammed through the nation's most unforgiving abortion ban, legalized permitless carry and implemented a new civics curriculum Talarico describes as a 'historical whitewash'. Then came an aggressive attempt to curtail voting rights that led him and dozens of Democratic lawmakers to flee the state in an attempt to deny the legislature a quorum. After 38 days, Talarico was among a handful who saw the writing on the wall and returned to Austin. As he explained in a lengthy op-ed, Texas Democrats held a dwindling stack of cards, and Congress would need to address the problem at the federal level. (The House delivered, but the bill failed in the Senate due to opposition from senators Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema.) Despite Talarico's hopes that ending the standoff might preserve a modicum of bipartisanship, it was not to be. In October, the legislature voted to redraw the state's congressional districts – an attempt to dilute the political power of Black and Latino voters and 'kill me off politically', he said. 'Walking on to that floor and realizing that my [Republican] colleagues weren't looking me in the eye, I felt like I had lost hope, not just in my colleagues and the institution, but in whether democracy was even possible in such polarized and divided times. It was my lowest point in public service so far.' Overcoming an urge to pack it in, he opted to fight. As it happened, a seat in solid-blue Austin, where he'd grown up, was open. Talarico moved home and won handily. (Now, Texan Republicans are contemplating another redistricting as a way to further dilute the Democratic vote. 'Clearly their gerrymandering didn't hold from five years ago, and so now they're having to get back in there and do some touch-ups and fortifying,' Talarico said.) Following his crisis of political faith, he made another critical life decision, enrolling in the seminary with the goal of becoming a minister. 'Jesus gave us these two commandments, to love God and love your neighbor,' he explained, noting that he considers his political career a vehicle for doing the latter. Now he understood: the two injunctions went hand in hand. Getting in touch with God, 'or whatever you consider to be the ground of your being', is what Talarico says makes love of neighbor sustainable. 'Whether that's in public service, as a teacher or a nurse or a firefighter or a police officer, or whether it's with activism or volunteering or just being a good person in your community, it is difficult and sometimes exhausting work, and that's why we have to be connected to something deeper.' An outspoken progressive Christian is something of a unicorn in today's political environment – a sign not only of the secularism that has characterized the Democratic party since the Reagan years but of the ever-increasing ties between the far right and the evangelical movement. Perhaps nowhere is this alliance more pronounced than in Texas, where the last legislative session saw a flurry of bills that would, among other things, allow prayer in public schools, fund parochial schools with taxpayer money and outlaw the provision of litter boxes for students – an actual bill based on a debunked rightwing hoax. The latter proposal stalled after Talarico's polite if methodical humiliation of the bill's author became one of his many viral TikToks; the others, including the Ten Commandments bill, became law. Talarico has done more than simply oppose what he considers to be bad legislation. He regularly calls out fossil fuel barons Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, who backed the legislative crusade. 'They basically own every Republican member of the state senate,' he said, noting that they are by far the state's biggest political donors. 'They own a majority of Republicans in the state house. They own every statewide elected official. And they run a massive network of thinktanks and advocacy organizations and media outlets. So their empire has really taken over state government. And they have a pretty extreme theocratic vision for for the state and the country.' Asked whether a Handmaid's Tale-style dystopia seemed possible, he said, 'We're a lot closer than people think.' Talarico defines the effort to wed government with biblical ideology as Christian nationalism, 'the worship of power – social power, economic power, political power, in the name of Christ', as he put it in a 2023 guest sermon. Accusing adherents of turning Jesus 'into a gun-toting, gay-bashing, science-denying, money-loving, fear-mongering fascist,' he declared it 'incumbent on all Christians to confront it and denounce it'. Posted to YouTube, the sermon has since garnered 1m views. The question now is not merely whether Talarico can translate that kind of social media buzz into votes but whether he wants to. He expects to obtain his master's in divinity next year, and he often speaks of his desire to one day take over the ministry at his home church, St Andrew's Presbyterian. But a slight detour to the US Senate seems increasingly possible – an indication of his growing popularity and ambition as well as a notable vibe shift on the left. A recent poll found that 62% of Democrats wanted their party's leadership replaced. And a strong contingent has shown a hunger for candidates, such as Talarico, who are willing to lean into progressive values without apology (he has, for example, mounted a forceful defense of gender-affirming care for trans kids). While Talarico makes a strong case for the undercurrent of wealth redistribution inherent in Jesus' teachings, he doesn't call himself a socialist – certainly not in Texas. Still it's not hard to see parallels between his meteoric rise and that of New York City's socialist mayoral hopeful, Zohran Mamdani, another young state legislator whose online savvy, bold progressivism and evident sincerity have endeared him to liberal voters. (In 2019, Talarico walked across his 25-mile district – nearly double the distance of Mamdani's recent Manhattan hike.) For Talarico, the key to winning over the electorate is authenticity. 'Voters can sniff out that consultant-driven messaging,' he said. 'The poll-tested stuff is just not going to cut it.' Moreover, voters are spoiling for a fight. One quality they appreciated in Trump, he said, was the aggression he'd shown on behalf of his vision, however malevolent. Democrats, he said, need to bring that kind of energy to the fight for a better world. And while Jesus Christ was famous for his humility and pacifism, Talarico noted, he was also an uncompromising radical who could tap into a combative side when needed. 'If we are doing our best to mimic Jesus, being kind and humble and meek are all part of it,' he said. 'But when the powerful are abusing people, we have to stand in the way, and that requires courage and bravery, and speaking truth to power.' In late June, Talarico appeared at a town hall in San Antonio alongside Castro and O'Rourke, a show of unity before what may well turn into a heated primary race. Befitting his status as the youngest and least seasoned politician on the stage, he spoke first. But as Talarico recalled the story of Jesus's cleansing of the temple, when he ejected the money-changers and merchants from the Lord's house, he didn't sound like a man inclined meekly to wait his turn to run for higher office. 'To those who love democracy, to those who love our neighbors,' he proclaimed, 'it's time to start flipping tables.' As for the Senate race, Talarico is praying on it. He'll make a decision this summer, he said.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Videos reveal harsh conditions inside Ice's New York City confinement center
Two videos have surfaced shedding light on what is happening behind closed doors at a New York federal building where people are being confined after being seized by officers on their way out of immigration court on the 12th floor, with the footage offering a rare look inside a controversial and closely guarded space that is part of Donald Trump's anti-immigration crackdown. The filming, shared by the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), captures one of several rooms at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, on the building's 10th floor, where accounts have emerged of people being detained in wholly unsuitable conditions with few basic provisions, but there had been no public access to direct evidence. The footage in question shows about two dozen men confined in bare rooms, some lying on the floor wrapped in aluminum emergency blankets while others sit on benches, the City reported on Tuesday. One clip shows two toilets just feet away from where people sleep, separated by a low wall. The video was secretly recorded by a man who had been detained after an immigration court appearance last week, according to the City, which first obtained the footage from the NYIC. The man who filmed the scenes had reportedly managed to have a phone in his possession despite the usual protocol by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) of confiscating personal items at arrest. Reports of people being held for protracted periods in deprived conditions in the Manhattan building have followed weeks of controversy about Ice officers turning up at immigration courts across the country, where they are usually not present, and apprehending people. The footage shows people held in the same building as one of the main immigration courts in New York City. It was sent to state assembly member Catalina Cruz's office. Until now, photos or videos from the 10th floor have not emerged in public. 'The American dream,' the unseen and unnamed detainee says as he films. 'Immigration, 26 Federal Plaza.' In a separate audio message also shared with the City , the same man adds: 'They haven't given us food, they haven't given us medicine. We're cold. There are people who've been here for 10, 15 days inside. We're just waiting.' Concerns about what goes on inside the federal building had been growing. Advocates, attorneys and immigrants themselves have described the 10th floor as overcrowded, with no beds, showers, or adequate access to food or healthcare. 'Ice is kidnapping so many people from New York's immigration courts that they had to create a new detention facility on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza. But instead of sharing the truth with the public, Ice has skirted accountability by consistently lying about what's happening on the 10th floor, and breaking the law by not allowing Congress members to view the conditions,' said Murad Awawdeh, president of the NYIC, in a statement. 'The 10th floor detention facility must be shut down immediately, and regularly inspected to ensure that Ice adheres to federal guidelines as mandated by law,' Awawdeh added. Leaked footage confirms what we've known all along: 26 Federal Plaza is a secret detention site where immigrants are being held in overcrowded, inhumane conditions. @DHSgov has spent months lying to cover it up. We need answers. We demand accountability. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in earlier statements about the facility that 'any claim that there is overcrowding or sub-prime conditions is categorically false'. Ice also maintains that the 10th floor is not used for detention. Officially, the agency describes the space as a processing center, and therefore not subject to congressional inspection rules that apply to detention facilities, where national lawmakers have to be allowed to visit. '26 Federal Plaza is not a detention center. It is a federal building with an Ice law enforcement office inside of it,' said McLaughlin. But data from Ice detention logs analyzed by the City revealed that from September 2023 through late June this year, people were held there in what Ice calls the 'NYC Hold Room' for an average of 29 hours. Some stayed for several days. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion The space remains off-limits to both journalists and lawmakers, even though members of Congress are supposed to be allowed to make unannounced visits to detention sites. Several Democrat representatives have been denied entry. Detainees and advocates continue to speak about grim conditions, including sparse food offerings, no showers or clothing changes, and people crammed into a single room with only the floor or hard benches to rest on, according to Gothamist. Meanwhile, Ice has been granted a huge budget boost. Trump's so-called 'big, beautiful bill' dedicates roughly $170bn for immigration and border-related operations – a sum that would make Ice the most heavily funded law enforcement agency in the federal government. This article was amended on 23 July 2025. A previous version showed an image of a different confinement center. The best public interest journalism relies on first-hand accounts from people in the know. If you have something to share on this subject you can contact us confidentially using the following methods. Secure Messaging in the Guardian app The Guardian app has a tool to send tips about stories. Messages are end to end encrypted and concealed within the routine activity that every Guardian mobile app performs. This prevents an observer from knowing that you are communicating with us at all, let alone what is being said. If you don't already have the Guardian app, download it (iOS/Android) and go to the menu. Select 'Secure Messaging'. SecureDrop, instant messengers, email, telephone and post See our guide at for alternative methods and the pros and cons of each.
