Chris Hedges: Street Battles Against ICE Are the Front Line vs. Police State

In this powerful narrated essay, Chris Hedges reports from the protests outside Delaney Hall, New Jersey’s largest ICE detention center, describing brutal clashes with guards and police using batons, tear gas, and pepper spray. He highlights the human cost — families torn apart, children sobbing as parents are deported — and the horrific conditions inside the GEO Group-run facility: moldy food, contaminated water, medical neglect, and retaliation against hunger strikers. Hedges argues these scenes are not isolated but a training ground and preview for a broader authoritarian crackdown, urging readers to join the fight now to prevent the full consolidation of a police state that strips rights and normalizes cruelty.