Immigration4h ago
John Mark Rozendaal was just trying to play music. On May 29, along with scores of others, Rozendaal responded to calls on social media to gather outside of Delaney Hall, the immigration detention facility in Newark, New Jersey. The privately run U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility had, in recent weeks, become the site of daily protests, spurred by a detainee hunger strike against alleged ghastly conditions inside. When Rozendaal went to Delaney Hall, he took his cello with him. “I consider music to be a de-escalatory thing to do,” he told The Intercept. “I sat down on the concrete barricade facing north and started to play.” “The agent said, ‘We’re calling because you were arrested at Delaney Hall.’” That night, however, the scene outside Delaney Hall quickly took a violent turn. New Jersey State Police and ICE (immigration enforcement agency) agents issued a dispersal order and began to clear protesters from the area by force — with officers deploying chemical weapons and charging protesters on horseback. “As I played, I saw this wall of plastic riot shields and cops in tactical gear advancing,” Rozendaal recalled. “There were tear gas canisters flying overhead. I could see horses behind the riot shields, flash-bangs. You are not under any obligation to speak to them about anything — especially if they are charging you with a crime.” Samuel Becker, another protester facing local charges after an arrest outside Delaney Hall, told The Intercept he too got a visit from federal agents in the days following his arrest. “The FBI would rather intimidate and punish the people protesting outside of Delaney Hall than investigate the physical, sexual, and psychological violence that ICE agents and their auxiliaries are inflicting on detainees across this country every day,” Becker said. By signing up, I agree to receive emails from The Intercept and to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use . “These attempts at contacting our clients at their homes and by phone violate their right to counsel and we ask that you immediately cease and desist from all attempts to question or interrogate our clients without their counsel present,” Van Meter wrote in the letter, dated June 9. “Any further efforts to question our clients are a continued violation of their constitutional right to counsel and our office remains ready to seek all available relief under both state and federal law.” In a statement to The Intercept, Karen Paff, a spokesperson for the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender, said Van Meter and his colleagues were simply looking “to ensure that the rights of our clients are respected.” “When law-enforcement officers seek to question individuals who are represented by counsel about matters within the scope of that representation, it is our responsibility to notify the appropriate agencies that counsel has been assigned and that any such communications must comply with the law,” Paff said. “This is not a new or case-specific practice. The Department of Government Efficiency has stripped Congress of its power of the purse.
