Newark, Doremus Road — June 2, 2026
By Justin Giron
I took the train to Newark on Tuesday to see, on foot, what was happening near Delaney Hall — a privately run detention facility on Doremus Road where detainees had been on hunger strike over conditions inside, and where protests and clashes with federal agents had been escalating for days.
I walked from Newark Penn Station through Little Tijuana and into Portugalia. No one at the Flaming Grill and Buffet spoke English when I asked for directions. At Altas Horas café, over flan and guava juice, a man named Raimundo pointed me toward Doremus Road.
A few blocks on, off Ferry and Magazine, I stopped in a thrift shop for a hat and found a Nikon photojournalist vest hanging by the door. Fifteen dollars, then twelve.
Not far from there, a young man carrying a longboard fell into step with me. He was headed to Jersey City for work. When I told him where I was going, he said only: "Ah, ICE. Hacen las cosas muy malos." We talked about immigration status — that there should be a process, that it matters how it's enforced — and he agreed. He walked me as far as the on-ramps of the Turnpike, jammed with roadside debris and diesel trucks, then pointed me up the next one and went his own way.
A hundred meters from the police roadblock on Doremus Road, I pulled back behind a utility pole and changed out of my button-down into the hoodie and mask, trucks passing tight against the curb. Two of them were blacked-out Suburbans with satellite dishes on the roof.
South on Doremus Road, every crane was hung with an American flag.
I positioned myself near the chain-link fence by the facility. Several women approached — who was I, who was I with, what was I photographing. I declined to show them my notebook or my camera. One offered me a bottle of water, then took the offer back. No one touched me. No one threatened me. I left on foot, uncomfortable, understanding why women watching a federal facility would look hard at a masked stranger with a camera and no clear answer for who he was.
I walked back through Newark's port-adjacent industrial blocks — shipping containers, cranes, graffiti, a bilingual injury-lawyer billboard — and doubled back through Portugalia. In a vacant lot on the way, a colony of stray cats. I sat down near them and offered part of a snack bar. One came close enough to touch.
By the time I got back to the train, I'd walked just under 30,000 steps.