Across three decades, Russia has been at the forefront of the worldwide descent into authoritarianism. Vladimir Putin’s government has suppressed opposition in ways that aspiring autocrats like Donald Trump are still striving to emulate. Yet despite widespread repression, there is still resistance in Russia, and as Putin’s model proliferates, people everywhere around the world stand to benefit from learning about it. Likewise, we should support Russian anarchist and anti-war prisoners, both because resistance within Russia offers hope for the eventual end of war and totalitarianism and because, should autocrats consolidate power where we live, we will wish for people to support us, as well. The following text is based on a presentation Antti Rautiainen offered at the Baltic Anarchist Book Fair in Tartu on May 30, 2026. You can watch a video of the presentation here or listen to it via Spotify. In Russia, street protests against the war were crushed in 2022, the first year following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. According to the human rights organization OVD Info, 18,901 arrests for anti-war protests in year 2022 were followed by 274 arrests in 2023, 41 arrests in 2022, and just 13 arrests in first half of the year 2025. The reason for this sharp decline was the “Ilya Dadin” law of 2014, according to which “repeated offenses in following the established organization of protests” across a period of 180 days can result a prison sentence of up to 5 years. Thousands of people were arrested once or twice for taking part in anti-war street activities in 2022 and received either a fine or a prison sentence of a few days—but few risked being arrested for a third time. Detentions for anti-war actions by year, first half of 2025, according to OVD-Info. Russian polls have been unreliable since spring 2022. After the criminalization of anti-war opinions, some polling companies reported that up to 60% of people queried refused to give answers. Before the polls became unreliable, 58-71% of Russians indicated a pro-war sentiment in various polls. However, opinions were intensely polarized between different groups. People in major cities were more anti-war than those in other locations; younger people were more anti-war, as were women. The greatest division was between people who watch television, the chief propaganda tool of the state, and people who do not watch it. Among people less than 30 years old who do not watch television, 80% were anti-war. The general impression among critical Russians is that the majority of those in Russia still share a pro-war sentiment. However, a shift is visible even in officially tolerated opinion polls. According to polls by the Levada Center, over the past two years, the share of Russians supporting the continuation of the war effort has dropped from around 41% to around 28%, and share of those who support peace talks has grown from 51% to 62%. At the same time, the number of those who support making concessions to Ukraine is at 24%: people want peace, but on terms favorable to Russia. Of course, this may simply reflect what people are willing to say to anonymous pollsters. Another difference is that now, people in small cities and rural localities are expressing more anti-war sentiment than those in major urban centers. Moscow is the most pro-war city. The likely explanation is that most of the frontline casualties are from small, peripheral communities. Factors Undermining the Anti-War Movement Why, after more than four years of war, with more than a million Russian soldiers wounded or dead, is anti-war sentiment still confined to a minority? As the saying goes, “It’s the economy, stupid.” During the first years of the war, salaries were growing even with high inflation rate. Starting in 2004, the Russian ruling class hoarded huge profits of the oil and gas trade in a fund currently known as the “National Wealth Fund.” Instead of raising the standard of living by investing in healthcare, social benefits and services, and the like, the money was stashed to be spent on wars and militarization. Now these billions are finally flowing into the economy in the form of wartime investment. The unemployment rate is negligible; in some cases, salaries have multiplied at factories in regions that were previously economically depressed. Generous monthly payments for contract soldiers are up to five times the average salary in poorer regions. At the same time, payments to widows and orphans are shifting the economy in the most destitute areas of the Russian federation, from which most of the enlisted soldiers come. During the first months of 2026, the Russian economy contracted for the first time since the beginning of the war; but now, once again, it is on a growth trajectory, due to the oil price hike following the war in Iran. The Russian state budget is running on a deficit due to the costs of the war, but there are plenty of ways to solve that issue, such as tax increases, using what remains of the National Wealth Fund, cutting social spending and education, and forcing oligarchs to buy state obligations. The Russian economy will likely be able to sustain the war for several years yet, although the standard of living is stagnating now and drone strikes are causing increasing inconvenience. Another factor explaining Russian support for the war is the situation on the frontline. Russia’s advances have been very slow for years, but most weeks, Russia is still gaining more territory than it is losing. The traditional dream of socialists of all stripes is that soldiers will turn their rifles against the ruling class and finish the war. But throughout world history, this usually takes place in a situation in which a war has already been lost, as in Russia in February 1917 and Germany in November 1918. It is not certain that Russia will win this war, but as long as the chances are high, many people would like to be on the winning side. The third factor is that for a random person, the risk of ending up in the war remains low. The independent media project Mediazona, originally established by members of Pussy Riot, has been tracking Russian losses by monitoring social media and other sources, and they have been able dig up information about 239,000 dead at the front. Of these casualties, the service branch of 22.5% of the casualties is unknown. 36.7% are volunteers, 11% are inmates, 21.5% are contract soldiers, and only 8.3% are mobilized soldiers. Some of the volunteers, inmates, and contract soldiers have not signed their contracts voluntarily; inmates and conscripts are pressured to sign contracts. But the vast majority of them had a choice, and even those mobilized often had the option of not appearing in the enlistment office and leaving the country or dodging the draft by other means. Few people who have died in the front have genuinely used every means at their disposal to avoid this. Also, many of those who would otherwise have opposed the war have left Russia. The exodus that took place in 2022 involved up to 700,000 people. Many of them have returned due to the difficulties of life in emigration, but emigration is continuing. At the same time, the intensity of the repression targeting anti-war opinion is without precedent since the beginning of Perestroika in 1986. From Protests to Direct Action Yet there are still protests and social movements. Activatica is a project monitoring protests in Russia, and they are tracking several hundred protests and direct actions every month. The most popular topics are environmental issues; anti-repression events, such as letter writing events for political prisoners, are still tolerated. Activatica lists much fewer anti-war protests, and those are usually direct actions. In a few cities, lone pickets of stubborn pensioners are still occasionally tolerated without a resulting prison sentence, such as the pickets by Viktor Gilin in Perm. Protests and direct actions by type, monthly, year 2025, according to Activatica. The number of anti-war direct actions actually appears to be growing. In 2024, Activatica recorded 145 actions; in 2025, 233 actions. Activatica tries not to count actions provoked by Ukrainian internet scammers, who hack the bank accounts of (usually elderly) persons, then blackmail them into carrying direct actions, which often result in severe sentences. The internet scamming industry is widespread in Ukraine, and it is contributing to the war effort in this dubious way, perhaps also as a consequence of its links to Ukrainian security services. Direct actions by region, 2024, according to Activatica. Direct actions by Russian region, 2025, according to Activatica. However, Activatica does not attempt to differentiate between actions carried out by activists and Ukrainian secret services—which is challenging in any case, because the secret services occasionally masquerade as activists. One may assume that actions involving explosives that occur not far from the Ukrainian border, or professional-level assassinations of Russian officers in major cities, are unlikely to be the efforts of activists, whereas small-scale Molotov cocktail attacks far from the frontline are probably the work of activists. Often, it is difficult to be sure who is behind what. Moreover, it is possible that people who genuinely oppose the war are contacting Ukrainian secret services in order to solve their own financial problems, or in order to combine their financial and a political interests. The model of Ukrainian secret service hiring civilians for money might be described as “Sabotage as Service”—the same model that is widely used by the Russian secret services in Ukraine and around Europe. Oil storage facilities burned in Kandry, Bashkokorstan, in an action claimed by Rospartisan on May 26, 2026. Rospartisan has a big-tent policy of covering any anti-war direct actions, from anarchists to the far-right. The vast majority of small-scale sabotage actions are not claimed by any group. During the first years of the war, the Combat Organization of Anarcho-Communists (BOAK) succeeded in conducting several major sabotage actions. BOAK was established before the 2022 invasion; it represents the direct continuation of the wave of insurrectionary anarchism that occurred in Russia from 2008-2013, inspired by the uprising in Greece in December 2008 after the police murdered Alexandros Grigoropoulos. Among the founders of the organization was Dmitry Petrov, an anarchist from Moscow who was killed by Russian forces while defending Ukraine in 2023. The logo of the Combat Organization of Anarcho-Communists. No one that the authorities have caught has been proven to be a BOAK activist. In one case, the authorities claimed that they had arrested a BOAK member for carrying out direct action, but an anarchist political prisoner who was held in the same prison confirmed that the activist had nothing to do with BOAK or anarchism. The case of another person who was arrested last year and accused of being a BOAK member still awaits confirmation or refutation, due to the secrecy of the court materials. BOAK cannot confirm or refute such claims because it does not preserve the personal details of its contacts. A photograph from a BOAK action. A photograph from a BOAK action. But although BOAK members have been able to evade the Russian authorities, several have been forced to flee Russia or to tone down their activities. This has largely reduced BOAK to a propaganda organization promoting direct action and anarchism. Organizations Supporting Anarchist and Direct-Action Prisoners Anarchists have established several organizations to support anarchists facing repression. Currently, the oldest is the Anarchist Black Cross of Moscow, established in 2003. For more than two decades, ABC Moscow has supported repressed anarchists, anti-fascists, anti-authoritarians and their supporters. As of now, ABC Moscow lists 23 anarchist and anti-fascist political prisoners in Russia, of whom 14 are in prison for alleged actions against industry or the military. Most of the rest were imprisoned prior to the full-scale invasion in 2022. During the first years of the war, ABC Moscow spread information about and supported diverse anti-war direct-action prisoners, but lately, their efforts have been confined to supporting anarchist and anti-authoritarian prisoners, due to the sheer number of anti-war prisoners. In 2025, ABC Moscow (and all the other ABC groups) were declared “undesirable” in Russia, which means that donating to them can result in a three-year prison sentence. Eventually, ABC Moscow moved all of its activities and members abroad; today, it focuses on spreading information and raising funds outside Russia. News about ABC Moscow activity appears regularly on the Avtonom website and via the group’s own Telegram channel. ABC Moscow can receive donations via Paypal and cryptocurrencies. As ABC Moscow’s activities inside Russia have become impossible, another organization has emerged to support anarchist and anti-authoritarian prisoners, named Fires of Freedom. You can follow its Russian-language Telegram channel here. Fires of Freedom. Solidarity Zone is another initiative started by anti-authoritarians to support anti-war direct action prisoners of various political convictions (excluding the far right). It was established in 2022, at a time when mainstream human rights organizations were not willing to support those sentenced for arsons and “terrorist” charges. Since then, the situation has changed; now, Russian opposition and human rights organizations have a more positive attitude towards direct action. However, Solidarity Zone is still providing support for 15 prisoners serving lengthy sentences for allegedly carrying out direct action, and the organization is following the cases of many more. Solidarity Zone. Although the mainstream democratic opposition has become more supportive of prisoners accused of direct action, in practice, the sheer number of prisoners has overwhelmed all prisoner support structures. The most significant Russian human rights organization, Memorial, has declared 1715 prisoners to be political, of whom 674 are anti-war prisoners. It has also listed 5608 people with “politically motivated charges.” Their process of identifying political prisoners has been slowed down severely by the number of cases. For example, Memorial designated the anarchist Alexandr Snezhkov as a political prisoner only two years after his case was submitted to them. In reality, the number of political prisoners in Russia is probably twice as many as they list. The growth of the number of political prisoners in Russia from 2012-2025, according to Memorial. Graph by Riddle. In the first half of 2026, 1234 people were sentenced for “terrorism” (including incitement)—an increase of 38% compared with the first half of 2025. The median prison sentence was 13 years. By the end of 2025, there were 5412 prisoners in Russia with “terrorism” charges, an annual growth of 40.9%. This number includes Ukrainian prisoners of war, who are routinely charged with ”terrorism,” sabotage as a service, provocateur victims etc. Motivations may also overlap. Altogether, 21,600 people are listed as “terrorists and extremists” on the blacklist of the Rosfinmonitoring, the Russian Federal Service of Financial Monitoring. In addition to prisoners, this list includes people whose sentences expired long ago, and people who have emigrated. Ending up on this list means a lifetime ban on receiving almost any bank services. In practice, those on the list can only earn a living in cash. Although supporting political prisoners has been a top priority for the Russian opposition, the avalanche of cases has caused prisoner support structures to collapse, and political prisoners have been reduced to statistics. More and more political prisoners have to face court without any financial support or lawyers. At this point, it is also worth asking what the point of such support even is, as no charges against political prisoners have been thrown out as a consequence of the efforts of lawyers, no matter how skillful. The outcome of every case has been decided long before they make it to the court. Nonetheless, lawyers provide a critical—albeit expensive—means of communicating with prisoners during the periods of investigation. Often, the authorities have stopped torturing prisoners after lawyers have become involved in their cases. Legal work sometimes secures some minor victories. For example, in summer 2023, Ivan Kudryashov, who was supported by Solidarity Zone while imprisoned for putting up anti-war posters in his hometown of Tver, won a hunger strike after 40 days, gaining the promise that he would have access to vegan food and vitamins sent to him in parcels. Viktor Filinkov, who was arrested in January 2018 and sentenced to seven years in prison on the accusation of being a member of a supposed underground anarchist “Network,” was repeatedly placed in solitary confinement in his prison colony. But with help of lawyers, he managed to challenge these policies and spent last years of his imprisonment in general population. Ivan Kurdyashov. An Incomplete List of Anarchists and Anti-Authoritarians in Russian Prisons and Prisoner Camps for Opposing the War Dmitri Syutkin is a young anarchist, and as many of the younger anarchists, encountered with anarchist ideas online and was rather isolated from the anarchist movement. He is from a small city in the Sverdlovsk region, and he maintained a small telegram channel advocating anarchism and independent Ural region. Three years ago, at the age of 17, he was entrapped by the FSB, who deceived him, claiming to represent Russian volunteers fighting in Ukraine. Anarchist prisoner support groups only became aware of him this year. Accused of terrorism and other charges, he may face up to 10 years in prison. Dmitri Syutkin. Another anarchist prisoner who was discovered relatively recently is Alexey Grigorev from Novotroitsk in the Orenburg region. Accused of planning to burn an FSB building and military recruiting center and of having contact with the Ukrainian authorities, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison in February 2025, before any prisoner support group learned of his case. Alexey Grigorev. Perhaps the most successful of the lone anarchist partisans is Ruslan Sidiki, who, unlike the prisoners listed above, had connection with the anarchist movement, having been active in a small and longstanding anarchist rural commune in the Leningrad area, close to St. Petersburg. He attempted to use drones to destroy strategic bombers, but failed as a consequence of electronic jammers. A second action against freight train was more successful, completely derailing a train transporting chemical ingredients. However, due to a small mistake, Ruslan was caught following a massive manhunt and sentenced to 29 years in prison in May 2025. This year, Ruslan’s lawyer was arrested, but Fires of Freedom managed to raise funds to pay for new lawyer to file his appeal. Ruslan Sidiki visiting the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in better times. Alexey Rozhkov, another lone anarchist partisan, was one of the first people to attack military enlistment offices. He attempted an attack with Molotov cocktails on March 11, 2022, just two weeks after the war began. He was soon arrested, but because minor sabotage did not yet result in automatic terrorist charges during the first months of the war, he was released pending court and escaped to Kyrgysztan. Unfortunately, he was kidnapped there, brought back to Russia, tortured, and charged with terrorism. In May 2026, he received a sentence of 16 years in prison. Alexey Rozhkov Eventually, this and other actions against enlistment offices inspired a massive wave of arson attacks. Mediazone listed 94 such attacks during the first year and a half of the war. During that early phase of the war, many enlistment offices did not have their files digitized, so burning an office could protect everyone from an urban neighbourhood or rural region from being sent to war for several months. Eventually, the authorities began a hurried effort to digitize all the conscript files; although actions against enlistment offices still occasionally take place, the value of the target is now doubtful. Currently, most anti-war sabotage is targeted against transport and energy infrastructure such as railroads. Alexey Rozhkov with Molotov Cocktail. CCTV camera footage, scan from print of the court documents. Arson attacks against military enlistment offices and other administrative buildings during the first year of the war, according to Mediazona. Blue signifies before the August mobilization, orange signifies after. Currently, the most significant case against anarchists is the Tyumen case, which is still in court. Six anarchists from Yekaterinburg in the Ural region and Tyumen and Surgut of Siberia are accused of establishing a clandestine anarchist organization. In August 2022, Kirill Brik and Deniz Aydin were arrested in a forest in Tyumen, allegedly while attempting to test explosives. Arrests followed in Yekaterinburg and Surgut. All of the arrestees were brutally tortured; they confessed, but eventually all of them except Kirill Brik recanted their testimony. Still, with a cooperating witness, the situation of the others accused is dire. Nikita Oleynik, the founder of the anarchist library Burevestnik (“Storm Petrel”) in Surgut, is accused of being “a leader of a terrorist group” and is in a danger of receiving a life sentence. The life sentence was introduced in Russia in 1992 as a replacement for the death penalty. For 34 years, no one with a life sentence has ever been released in Russia. The other defendants in the Tyumen case face up to 25 years in prison each. Deniz Aidyn. Yuri Neznamov. Danil Chertykov. Nikita Oleynik. Roman Paklin. Aleksandr Snezhkov and Lyubov Lizunova were arrested in Chita in the far east of Russia in October 2022, while only 19 and 16 years old. Allegedly, they painted graffiti reading ”Death to the regime.” They were also suspected of administering a Telegram channel with anarchist and anti-war messages. Snezhkov was sentenced to six years in prison and Lizunova to three and a half years in April 2024. This year, Aleksandr received an additional sentence for “incitement” because he allegedly read his legal papers to other prisoners; he has been sent to a stricter prison for the remaining two years of his sentence. Lyubov Lizunova and Aleksandr Snezhkov. Solidarity Zone tracked down the anarchist Roman Shvedov in the court system in autumn 2024. He was accused of anti-war arson. However, he refused the support that Solidarity Zone offered, insisting that there was nothing that could be done for him and emphasizing that he would prefer for the resources to be directed to other victims of repression. After being sentenced to 16 years in prison, he committed suicide in a Rostov jail in December 2024. The face of this fallen anarchist comrade remains unknown to us. Solidarity groups do not even have a proper photograph of him, only a pixelated face from Russian mainstream media. Roman Shvedov. What Can Those Abroad Do for Russian Anarchist Prisoners? The most straightforward way to act in solidarity with Russian prisoners is by spreading information—for example, translating news and carrying out banner drops, graffiti, and other forms of direct actions. A great deal of news about Russian anarchist prisoners is available on the English section of the website of Autonomous Action, the former Russian Libertarian Communist federation, which is now working as a media project. The logo of Autonomous Action. With automatic translation tools available for free online, it is easy to write letters even when the prison censors only allow prisoners to receive letters in Russian. It is possible to write to a number of anarchist prisoners via the prisonmail.online service at a small cost; the service also provides the opportunity to receive replies. It is possible to write other prisoners via snail mail. A full list of addresses is available via the ABC Moscow website. Prisoner solidarity groups are in constant need of funds to pay for lawyers and other costs of imprisonment. You can donate to fundraising campaigns and projects that support prisoners—Anarchist Black Cross of Moscow, Fires of Freedom, and Solidarity Zone. It is also possible to donate to direct action initiatives such as BOAK using cryptocurrency. Last but not least, you cansupport the anarchists of Belarus (such as the Anarchist Black Cross of Belarus and Pramen) and Ukraine (such as Solidarity Collectives). All three countries are now locked in a common struggle against war and Russian authoritarian imperialism.

At the border with Mexico in Arizona, for the first time in history, a tree sit is blocking the construction of the border wall that Trump promised his voters. This wall is cutting a ragged wound across the precious and diverse ecosystems that defy the myth that the border represents a natural division between worlds. Two weeks ago, one protester decided it was time to block the machine that was about to destroy the last of four ancient cottonwood trees that stood in the way of the wall’s construction. A sheriff arrested him; he was released twelve hours later with no charges filed. This arrest galvanized the community. Less than two days later, friends installed a platform in the tree. Since then, it has been impossible to level this one part of the land because there is someone living in a tree and many supporters on the ground making sure everybody knows it. If the tree is felled, our friend in the tree is likely to be killed along with it. Knowing this, the general contractor, Fisher Sand and Gravel, as well as their private security, Vision Quest, the United States Army, Border Patrol, and the Santa Cruz County Sheriff have not yet been able to remove us from the shade of the old growth cottonwood that has likely stood here since before the land was acquired by the United States. We invite you to join us in refusing the border regime—whether that means coming here to Lochiel, Arizona or take action wherever you are. The border is everywhere that their networks of violence extend. What follows here is an account from within this emerging struggle. We have been experiencing a moment of relative stillness within a historical eddy. This summer has been full of fleeting conflagrations, weather hotter than we remember last year, and the feeling, never quite departing, that all of this can’t stay as precariously stable as it seems. The stability of the United States project has felt suffocating. We hear whispers of true resistance and see photos of joyful rupture, but our day-to-day lives have largely remained the same, with perhaps a few more friends, commitments, and Signal chats to keep up with than this time last summer. Gathered under the last of four ancient cottonwoods in the path of the new double border wall construction, we have found a moment of possibility. For now, we have managed to stop the regime in its tracks. The wall cannot be built where this grandmother stands so long as we, too, stand here. For over a year, environmentalists and local community members have been spending time together in Lochiel, Arizona. This town is all but abandoned. Many buildings here are becoming ruins, illustrating Lochiel’s peripheral relationship to the metropolis just a few hours to the northwest. These gatherings have built a compassionate and cohesive network that stretches far beyond the roads, buildings, fences, livestock, and ecology of the valley in which Lochiel is located. A few individuals have brought together many people to witness the splitting of this valley, and our world, apart. Lochiel sits directly adjacent to the US-Mexico border. One of the houses in the town, the old customs house for the now-closed port of entry, butts up so close to the border that the owner was concerned that it too would be demolished to make room for the double wall. People on both sides of the border fence live much the same way, raising cattle and singing together under the same shade of cottonwoods in the same valley, under the same bright blue dome of the sky. The many very old cottonwoods at the bottom of this valley used to reach across the border, creating a continuous canopy over the road. This high-elevation prairie ecosystem is one of the most biologically diverse in the world, with countless varieties of insects and grasses, flowering plants, and many threatened bird species along with coatis, coyotes, bears, and jaguars. All of this life is at risk here. A few years ago, in the fall and early winter of 2022, in the Coronado National Forest, which lies east of Lochiel, a similar composition of people resisted another attempt at building a border wall. This effort to block then-governor Doug Ducey’s container wall was ultimately successful. The participants employed much the same rhetoric and similar tactics. Yet today, the political climate has changed dramatically. In 2022, during the Biden years, Governor Ducey broke many laws to use shipping containers to “fill the gaps” left by Trump’s first ineffectual effort to build the wall he had promised his voters. Miles and miles of national forest—where the state government does not have jurisdiction—were clear-cut and graded without any permits or concern for the law or the environment. The project cost millions of dollars and inflicted untold impacts on this precious ecosystem. With protesters standing in front of the vehicles doing this construction, crews were forced to work through the night. Protesters responded by setting up a camp in the border road itself. But at that time, Ducey was only tacitly supported by the United States government. After two weeks of occupation, the courts finally moved to intervene. Ducey was stopped not only by blockaders, but by the authority of federal law. Today, in Lochiel, there is no lawsuit, no salvation from the courts to wait on. This wall, which is no less monstrous than that one, has been engineered for its purpose, and the law has been re-engineered as well. Under Trump’s second term, what was recently mere illegal buffoonery has become a blunt force supported by the law. All of us in Lochiel now, regardless of ideology, see that the power consolidated in the last four years indicates the state’s absolute disregard for life of all kinds. We are fighting for life. The state brings only death. A few hours west of Lochiel, a place called Quitobaquito Springs or A’al Vaipia by the O’odham people is also preparing for struggle against imminent border wall construction. The springs are a sacred ceremonial site for the O’odham people, some of whom lived there until the 1950s, when the national parks service annexed the land to form Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. This spring relies on ancient aquifers that the construction will likely deplete to such an extent that the spring will cease to exist. This desecration is an existential threat to the O’odham people’s traditional religious geography; it also spells extinction for wild populations of Sonoyta pupfish and springsnails, which can only be found in the waters of A’al Vaipia. Resistance is mounting in the form of O’odham-led prayer runs and endangered species lawsuits, among other efforts, but the sense of doom is growing as surveyors arrive and construction crews make preparations. Adjacent to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument is Tohono O’odham Nation. The US border has divided O’odham land since the initial process of colonization. The government of Tohono O’odham Nation recently released an announcement declaring all border wall contractors trespassers. “No Trespassing” signs are being placed to notify contractors of their illegal entry of the land. The border has already desecrated O’odham land, and this wall would destroy sacred sites and make connection across the border even harder than it is already. Before, a construction project would have been compelled to address these issues, but the Real ID act has freed the government of the responsibility to conduct archeological and environmental studies. The border wall is materially dissolving all history, life, and culture that could get in its way. As I write, the fence that marks the border near Lochiel is being removed, panel by panel. I watch as the same machine that tore up three ancient cottonwoods in this valley carefully stacks up the fence panels. In a collective daydream encouraged by the heat of the sun, we imagined that this could the last time the valley will be divided by violence. That the valley could one day become whole again. That the mythology of the state might give way to land, sun, soil, abundance, freedom. This daydream ended as quickly as it started. The double wall now reaches almost to the edges of the roots of the fourth grandmother cottonwood that has been marked for death to make way for this monstrous infrastructure. Dust clouds from construction billow over her leaves as her roots are crushed by countless trucks and drowned by water stolen from the aquifer below in an attempt to keep the disturbed soil on the ground. On Monday, July 27, a local person decided to stand in front of the machinery that is supposed to take this last of four border trees out of its soil and all of our lives. For this act of care, he was arrested by Santa Cruz County Sheriff Hathaway’s deputies and put in jail for the day. He was released without any charges being filed. This act of bravery resounded in southern Arizona. As the news spread, many more people turned towards this small town with their hearts and minds alight. A window opened into the possibility of stopping the construction of the wall and properly grieving the ecosystem that is being split in two. Journalists, environmental NGOs, humanitarians, and anarchists flooded into the small town in response to this invitation. In less than two days, the network spread its roots far enough that it was possible to establish a tree sit in the arms of that last of four grandmothers. People rigged a platform in the top of the tree and raised a banner. Old cottonwoods are huge—and fragile. At any moment, any limb could drop without warning; the stress that this tree is enduring only makes that more likely. But that risk is worth it to the tree sitter and those supporting from below. This moment of freedom is worth the risk. The tree sit is both a symbol and an intervention. It draws on the activists’ experience with historic forest defense tactics and environmental militancy—and on a commitment to the more-than-human world. The tree sit in this particular place has done what few other tactics have been able to, completely halting the progression of the border wall construction in this small part of the San Rafael Valley. On three sides of the tree, construction is continuing, but still she stands with one of us held in her wide arms. Just after the sit went up, the sheriff was called once again. An employee of a private security firm called Vision Quest attempted to intimidate the sitter and the camp that blossomed under the tree. The sheriff did not come. We are told that he is also against the building of this wall. That day, it appeared that there was nothing that the private security guards, border patrol, or even the marines stationed at this part of the border driving back and forth in a golf cart could do to us without the sheriff’s cooperation—at least legally, at least for now. That night we walked in the border road easement without fear. In the two weeks since then, construction nearby has been largely disrupted due to people’s commitment to standing in the way as well as the miraculously full and regular monsoon season that has made the San Rafael valley so lush this year. The summer rain still falls here, unlike in Phoenix and Tucson. Lightning, downpours, and high winds have blessed us with breathing space in this moment of opportunity. No one knows what to do with us. While I can still feel the sun on my skin, the pressure of the heat of summer has lifted. Finally, we can run, play, and learn to defend the world of the real within the small power vacuum that we have created together under this cottonwood. We are at the edge of the false world that we are told we belong to, piercing its thick rubbery skin and feeling the breeze of freedom in the midst of the violence of ever-escalating border fascism. The margins and hinterlands of capital remain places that can offer enough space to move for those of us willing to puncture the illusion of state control. News from the margins quickly reached one of many centers of control. On Wednesday, August 5, we received news from Phoenix that some “anarchists and troublemakers of the metropolis” had carried out an action at the office of the general contractor awarded with the border construction project, Fisher Sand and Gravel. This company has made a billion dollars on the wall construction contract. The “troublemakers” trashed the office and posted a people’s eviction notice on the door, sending a message that just as the border is everywhere, there is a way for anyone to push back against it anywhere. The reportback from this action, originally posted on a regional noblogs site, begins, “The border is like an open wound.” There is no truer statement. Everywhere that the border is developed, maintained, and expanded, there is blood. We are only trying to heal this wound. Much of the mainstream media rhetoric around the tree sit relies on neoliberal understandings of what is possible. If only there were one wall under construction rather than two, these cottonwoods might have been saved. If only the border could be maintained more abstractly, it would seem less violent from afar. If only these cottonwoods could have all been saved, the ecosystem would have stayed intact. If only the construction would be stopped by active nests that Border Patrol stated would prevent the callous removal of the grandmothers standing in the way. The studies abound, and all of it is true. There is irreparable harm being enacted on this ecosystem by the wall and its construction. On the ground, many people have a simpler outlook. As the banner hanging on the still-standing tree reads, “BORDERS KILL.” We deny any line that divides us. We oppose any force that prevents people, animals, and water from moving and dwelling where they will. We refuse to believe that this wall will stand forever. We know that with our continued refusal, we can tear it down. We know that the roots of these cottonwood trees remain, although torn and slowly decaying, deeper than the wall is anchored by cement into the thick soil of the San Rafael Valley. The cicadas sing with us. They tell us that rain is coming to make the road too muddy for heavy machinery to pass. In this moment, we do not know how long the tree sitter will be able to remain in the grandmother cottonwood we’ve grown to love. Many leaves have grown yellow and fallen due to the stress, yet there is new growth at the tips of the smallest branches. At any moment, the sheriff may decide that it is time for him to do his job. Perhaps more willing arms of state power will be commanded to remove us. But we will be here to stop this intervention, to stop the extension of the wall from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean, to stop the real world from being separated by an imaginary line imposed through raw violence. We welcome you to join us here in Lochiel; we invite you into the freedom we have found here, to fight the border where you are. We need you to help us to expand this space of possibility that we feel so clearly in this moment from the margins to the whole world. We know you can feel it too.

On July 4, 2025, roughly a dozen people participated in a demonstration at the Prairieland Detention Center, a facility serving Immigration and Customs Enforcement. At the conclusion of the demonstration, a participant named Benjamin Song saw a police officer aim a gun at a participant named Nathan Baumann and fired warning shots at the ground in response. Since then, police have arrested 22 people on widely publicized conspiracy and terrorism charges, subjecting many of them to long-term solitary confinement and other pressure tactics. Eight defendants who chose not to cooperate with the prosecution have been found guilty and sentenced to between 30 and 100 years in prison each, with one of them receiving a 30-year sentence simply for having moved a box of zines. The Prairieland prosecution is a flagship effort intended to criminalize opposition to fascism per se in line with the Trump administration’s National Security Presidential Memorandum-7. The prosecution’s approach hinges on the idea that the defendants constitute an “antifa cell,” despite many of them not knowing each other at all. This is not unprecedented. On the contrary, it is a strategy of repression that is familiar elsewhere in the world, under even more authoritarian regimes. In Russia, for example, it has become common for officers from the Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the KGB, to use electrical shock torture to attempt to coerce arrestees suspected of anarchism into signing false confessions affirming the existence of invented conspiracies. The playbook is to fabricate an association, then pressure defendants to plead guilty, manufacturing evidence of the supposed conspiracy. In Russia, they do this with cattle prods; in the Prairieland case, they are attempting to accomplish the same thing via less flagrant means, including solitary confinement and threats. In the year since the demonstration at the Prairieland facility, federal agents have tried to expand on this precedent. Prosecutors continue to indict new defendants in the Prairieland case. In May 2026, three people in Spokane, Washington were convicted on felony conspiracy charges for protesting against Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity. On June 16, federal agents carried out aggressive house raids across the Twin Cities, arresting twelve people and indicting fifteen on federal conspiracy charges. What is possible in Texas will not necessarily work in Minnesota. In parts of Texas, far-right and outright fascist state officials control much of the judicial bureaucracy and police, and have the support of much of the population; in Minnesota and other parts of the country, ICE and other elements of the Trump administration are so unpopular that even grand juries, long known as a tool that prosecutors can use for any purpose, sometimes refuse to indict arrestees. The local culture that prevails within the judicial infrastructure of different districts, the amount of leverage that local social movements exert, and the perspectives of the available jury pool all make a significant difference in the outcome of cases like these. The outcome of the first Prairieland trial should not intimidate us out of organizing and taking action; rather, it shows how high the stakes are. Both direct support for the defendants and general efforts to organize, popularize, and legitimize resistance can play a role in blocking federal efforts to normalize the Prairieland model. Even if the appeals courts show themselves to be just as corrupt as the courts that have convicted and sentenced Prairieland defendants, if we build a strong enough movement, whoever succeeds Donald Trump in power could be compelled to commute their sentences. If we withdraw from organizing, if we shrink from resistance, this will embolden the Trump administration and its supporters and they will intensify their attacks. Rather than permitting them to frighten us out of trusting each other, we must build deep personal ties and widespread community support in order to endure campaigns of repression. We can win this fight. What follows is a statement by Fire Ant Movement Defense. The Trial On June 23, witnesses across the country watched in horror as the non-cooperating defendants in the Prairieland trial were given staggering sentences in the most blatant case of political persecution in a generation. Like the Haymarket trial, the Red Scare, and the repression of the Black Panther Party before it, the Prairieland case has come to define a new era of state terror intended to crush dissent. It is critical to understand the conditions under which this trial took place. The defendants were humiliated, denied medical care, and repeatedly tortured by state officials throughout the duration of their custody. They were wheeled into court rooms shackled to chairs, forced to clean human feces off of cell walls, subjected to vile human rights offenses that reflect the complete immorality of the American judicial system. The point of these violations was both to punish and to coerce, in hopes that the defendants would turn on one another and abandon their values—the very existence of which this trial was designed to condemn. The majority of the defendants resisted these efforts, demonstrating incredible resilience in the face of overwhelming violence. However, others chose to forsake their values, reject their communities, and betray their comrades in acts of cowardly self-preservation. Without these cooperators, it is entirely possible that the Prairieland trial would have ended with almost all of the defendants winning their freedom. The Defendants Much of the state cooperation in the Prairieland trial was manufactured through torture and motivated by fear. It manifested in different forms, occurred in different degrees, and, like all matters of political importance, resists simple moral categorization. Of the nineteen defendants facing federal charges, five of them—Seth Sikes, John Thomas, Nathan Baumann, Lynette Sharp, and Susan Kent—took the stand at trial and condemned others to years in prison for their own benefit. Two additional defendants—Joy Gibson and Rebecca Morgan—took plea agreements. While these were non-cooperating pleas, the text of the deals affirmed the existence of a fictional “North Texas Antifa Cell,” which some in the movement have characterized as potentially damaging to other defendants. One other defendant, Meagan Morris, initially gave hours of testimony to federal agents, before rejecting cooperation, refusing a plea agreement, and standing trial with her comrades. All of these cases are materially different from each other. Taking the stand in a courtroom is not the same thing as giving an interview immediately after arrest; full-fledged cooperation is not the same as taking a plea deal that affirms the state’s fabricated narrative. We reject simplistic generalizations that frame all mistakes as unforgivable, rendering it impossible to create an off-ramp for those who have previously cooperated with the state to change course, make amends, and restore their commitment to struggle. Meagan Morris We believe that Meagan Morris made an indefensible choice in giving hours of testimony to federal agents. By corroborating John Thomas’s testimony, she contributed to the arrests of Rebecca Morgan, Benjamin Song, and Autumn Hill. After that, she ceased all cooperation, refusing further interviews. She did not take a plea deal. She did not take the stand against her codefendants. Many people will demand that she pay for her choice. We ask them to consider the ways in which she is already paying it. Despite her initial cooperation, the state was happy to punish her alongside the non-cooperating defendants after she chose to change course. For months, she has faced harassment, starvation, and humiliation like the other defendants. Other cooperators who continued betraying their values received sentences as short as 22 months—but she, rediscovering her courage, rejected that possibility. This does not erase what she did. The depth of her betrayal will be measured by the days, years, or decades that those who once called her a comrade spend in cages. Additionally, the end of Morris’s sentence will mark the beginning of another painful and complicated period when she will have to reckon with what accountability her community will demand for her choices. Morris has made the strongest course correction towards revolutionary solidarity that is possible in her position. Her refusal to cooperate further landed her a fifty-year sentence. If we believe that remorse, redemption, and renewal are possible, then Morris has committed herself to seeking them. If we do not, then we must ask ourselves what we can offer defendants who have erred but have yet to decide whether to continue to assist the state. If we cannot offer those who have begun to cooperate any incentive to stop doing so, that all but ensures that once someone starts cooperating, they will become a permanent addition to the state’s arsenal against us. There are lines that, once crossed, render return impossible. Baumann, Thomas, Sikes, Sharp, and Kent chose their side long ago. There are revolutionary contexts in which totalizing zero-tolerance policies are necessary. But at this moment, thousands of inexperienced new participants are flooding into the fight for liberation. We probably won’t be able to educate all of them before they find themselves in confrontations with the state. Some of them will experience intense repression designed to scare them into cooperating before they fully understand the political implications, the options available to them, or their basic rights. When they find themselves staring down the barrel of a gun, some may well say something they shouldn’t. If we immediately make permanent enemies of everyone who do so, this may further endanger others. On the Non-Cooperating Pleas Two defendants accepted pre-written plea deals confirming the state’s fictions. The text invents a fictional antifa cell, takes for granted that antifascist activity is “terrorism,” and argues that wearing black is proof of criminal intent, among other absurdities. After the defendants had spent months in torturous conditions, the state pushed a deadline for agreeing to the pleas under threat of still worse federal indictments. Both Rowan Gibson and Rebecca Morgan, who signed those pleas without giving interviews, have been sentenced to 15 years each. On an individual level, signing the pleas limited their options. Their potential defenses in regards to their state charges are weakened. The pleas could also be damaging for their codefendants. Some argued that the pleas would be levied against the defendants at trial, cited as proof that some participants agreed to language describing the fictionalized “antifa cell” and supposed plans for an “ambush.” As it turned out, at the federal trial, prosecutors relied more on the testimony of cooperating witnesses, but the pleas remain available to introduce when the state-level charges go to trial. In addition, the pleas are a liability for the movement as a whole. It has been clear since the Department of Justice’s first press release on July 8 that their chief goal is to use this case to set a precedent and establish a narrative. This is the core of their strategy, and these pleas help them to advance it. Rowan Gibson and Rebecca Morgan took these deals, despite the bleak outcomes, primarily because of vile jail conditions, mental and physical health problems, and pressure from their lawyers. Their plea deals offer a cautionary example of what can happen in the worst circumstances when defendants do not have enough collective legal support. If their lawyers had been willing to work with the defense committee, take advice from legal experts with a better understanding of the politics around the case, or enter joint defense agreements, these pleas could have been avoided. On the Defendants Who Testified for the State All five of the testifying witnesses have now been sentenced. Thomas and Sharp got just over nine years, Sikes and Kent got six, and Baumann got less than two. Across both of the courtrooms, on both sentencing dates, the conservative judges spoke explicitly about sending a message. As for the nine defendants who went to trial, their total of 500 years of prison time represents a clear threat: associate with this ideology in any way and we will bury you. But what message can we read in the disparities among the sentences of the five defendants who testified for the state? Sentencing for cooperating defendants has traditionally been based on the criminal acts they’re accused of, the timing and extent of their cooperation, and the amount of new and actionable information they provided. This case diverges from the historical precedent. Thomas was not present in Alvarado, Texas on July 4, 2025. He began cooperating very early in the investigation after his house was raided, and consistently provided evidence following his arrest. His interview on July 12 led to Sharp’s arrest on the 13th, and his subsequent interview on the 14th led to the arrests of Song and Morgan on the 15th, as detailed in the criminal complaints against Rebecca Morgan and Susan Kent. Thomas’s cooperation also contributed to the arrest of Dario Sanchez. Thomas and Sharp pled to one count of material support for terrorism for sheltering Song. Ordinarily, harboring a fugitive can land someone up to a year in prison. In contrast, Sikes was present at the demonstration, armed, and lit fireworks, which the state argued are explosive devices. He began cooperating with the state in October or November 2025. Based on the timing of arrests, it seems unlikely that Sikes’ cooperation provided much additional actionable information. Baumann was present at the demo, stayed through the arrival of police lieutenant Thomas Gross, admitted to bringing spray paint, and is the only person on video damaging any property. He agreed to cooperate very early on, but knew none of the participants and could provide very little identifying information. Precedent would suggest that Baumann would get the heaviest sentence, while Sikes and Thomas would get less. In fact, the reverse occurred. Their sentences set a precedent overwriting the old norms, replacing the old criteria with a loyalty test. In testifying, both Thomas and Sikes willingly betrayed their values. Yet Thomas contradicted the state’s narrative under cross-examination, and Sikes held back on even the most basic key elements, such as the definition of anti-fascism. Baumann didn’t betray his beliefs; he apparently had none. Nor did he betray his comrades—he apparently had no comrades, either. Instead, he proved himself to be an enthusiastic vessel for the state’s most poisonous lies. The state’s legal argument for terrorism hinges on the property destruction that Baumann alone admitted to. In their flagship NSPM-7 test case, they were willing to let him off easy because he helped them to advance their agenda. NSPM-7 creates a carveout in the judicial system where thought crimes are more important than material acts. Effective repressive strategies are designed to target specific tactics of resistance, such as the emphasis that our political movements place on refusing to cooperate. This era of authoritarianism introduces a form of repression in which action is practically irrelevant, for it is ideology that is on trial. Previous judicial norms, flawed as they were, are being abandoned in favor of litigating the thoughts, beliefs, and orientations that the Trump regime believes pose a threat to its reign of terror. In this legal purgatory, action becomes irrelevant, evidence becomes optional, and cooperators are not rewarded for contributing to investigations so much as for their readiness to affirm outrageous lies. Conclusion The pages of revolutionary history are full of ordinary people who chose to embody courage, fortitude, and commitment, no matter the cost. They are equally full of people—like the cooperating defendants in this trial—who once claimed to believe in freedom, liberation, and struggle, but later proved that they cared more for themselves than for justice. We are enduring some of the worst authoritarianism that this country has seen in the past fifty years. The actions that people have taken in Prairieland, the Twin Cities, Los Angeles, and elsewhere remind us that even in the midst of killings, torture, and life sentences, radicals across this country will continue to choose the path of resistance, rejecting fear, even if it means risking everything. We recognize that experiencing repression is an inevitable consequence of striving for freedom in a social order that is tightening its grip on us. The Prairieland trial has shown us the very best and worst of our communities. Benjamin Song could die in prison for potentially saving Nathan Baumann’s life. Baumann will soon walk free for betraying Song’s. Neither one of these things had to be. We must hurry to adapt to this new era of repression. We must educate as many people as possible about the crucial importance of refusing to answer questions from police or federal agents; we must build awareness about grand juries and how to resist them; above all, we must establish stronger legal support infrastructure, including media outreach, to put at the disposal of everyone who may end up in the crosshairs of the state. Finally, we must continue to support the Prairieland defendants. This case is far from over; the appeals process remains ahead, and how that goes will shape state and federal policy. Repression destroys lives and rips apart families; it is designed to break us. But make no mistake—at its core, their system of violence relies less on what it can do to us than on what it can make us do to each other. Fire Ant Movement Defense is an anti-repression collective made up of former political defendants and members of defense committees. We believe in mass defense strategies and advise defendants and their supporters on how to fight their cases from a political angle. We are not lawyers. Through repeated experiences, we have gained skills in media work and in synergizing political and legal strategies. In every case, we work towards building a response to repression that approaches the judicial system as an arena where we can fight—and win.

On May 22, 2026, amid a surge of hunger strikes in immigration detention prisons across the United States, 300 detainees announced from their cells in Newark, New Jersey that they would not eat and would not toil for their captors until their demands were met. This sparked ten days of protest and furious retaliation from federal, state, and local authorities. What began as a peaceful vigil outside Delaney Hall Detention Center in solidarity with the hunger strikers ended with New Jersey State Troopers encircling, brutalizing, and arresting scores of people. The series of events leading up to the strike and culminating in a marathon of violence has been densely packed. Consequently, the fog of war has obscured key details, including the complex dynamics at play between protesters and mutual aid workers, between experienced anti-ICE activists and the local terrain, between the government of New Jersey and federal mercenaries. Here, a participant in mutual aid efforts at Delaney Hall over the preceding months—who was on the ground for much of this wave of protests—recounts how the clashes unfolded. You can donate to support families impacted by immigrant detention here. Who, What, When, Where I am a volunteer with Eyes on ICE New Jersey, a mutual aid collective that has been providing aid and hospitality to the detainees held captive in Delaney Hall—which is one of the largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers in the Northeast—and to the families that travel to visit them. Eyes on ICE is a coalition of volunteers and a preexisting network of aid organizations, including Movimiento Cosecha, Pax Christi New Jersey, First Friends of New York and New Jersey, Mami Chelo Foundation, and others that have emerged over decades of advocating for those subjected to an increasingly archaic immigration system. Established immigrant justice and faith-based communities with aligned advocacy goals converged on Delaney Hall soon after it reopened in May 2025. Despite the forceful retaliation of federal and local police, the protests continued, only slowing down after the arrests of faith leaders and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka. Over the following weeks, protesters self-organized and refocused their efforts—shifting to assisting detainees and their families through networks of aid distribution, lawyers, and advocates, seeking to catch people before they fall through the cracks. At the same time that the aid group was being built, a ring of concertina-topped mesh-fencing sprang up around the prison. As the weather grew colder, the government of Essex County, the county that holds the detention facility, erected a permanent white tent to house Eyes on ICE. That tent has come to be called the “Radical Hospitality Zone.” The “Radical Hospitality Zone,” where Eyes on ICE volunteers built a space for visitors coming to see people incarcerated in Delaney Hall. Volunteers who do not have professional careers in advocacy participate by helping to maintain a community at the prison gates. Some of us cook or battle inclement weather. Others offer child care, collect donations of groceries and diapers, assist visiting families with transportation, or beautify the tent that houses us with art and music. All of us work together to document the detainees and their captors. Delaney Hall Detention Center is situated in one of the busiest shipping hubs in the country. Located directly behind Newark Airport, the private prison shares the same square mile with multiple incineration plants and a busy commercial road. Periodically, a train screams by loaded with trash to be incinerated or animal carcasses for reprocessing at the facility across the street. The prison is about the size of a Costco, with a 1000-bed capacity. It is operated by GEO Group, one of the largest private prison contractors in the world. GEO Group has a poor human rights track record and is quick to dismiss any inquiries or criticisms. The New Jersey Globe reports that the prison is often at maximum capacity; volunteers do their best to count the number of captives inside the tinted windows of the vans that come and go. Some of the people who are released tell us they were arrested just days earlier, usually by accident or as a consequence of racial profiling. Others have been in the system for months, “…transferring between detention centers in Louisiana, Texas, and then back to Delaney, seemingly with the dual purpose of keeping them hidden or underrepresented in the legal system, while also creating excuses for GEO Group (owner of Delaney and often the largest private prison company in the states) to run up quite the tab with the obsequious federal government.” -The Puddle at Delaney Hall The facility is built on a filled-in portion of marshland and river. Backfill and debris from old construction form the foundation for Delaney Hall and the rest of the Ironbound neighborhood. The Ironbound is a historically redlined neighborhood, meaning it has long been home to Black, brown, and immigrant communities. Consequently, the Ironbound was zoned for heavy industry, and the 16-mile stretch of land that Delaney Hall sits on has come to be known as “Chemical Corridor” due to rampant environmental contamination from every form of industry imaginable. In short, it is desolate. There are no homes nearby and a single bus line serves the area. This was the arena for the week of state violence that shook the country. Behind the Strike On May 22, Gabriela Soto, whose husband Martin Soto was then held in Delaney Hall, announced that a protest had begun within the prison. During the early hours of the protest, she publicly shared a phone call with Martin. The privilege of speaking on the phone with detainees has since been revoked for all families, along with all other forms of visitation. During that call, Martin announced that he had coordinated with up to 300 other detainees to begin a hunger and labor strike to draw attention to inhumane living conditions and lack of due process under the law. Detainees in Delaney Hall are forced to do all the work to maintain their own prison, receiving $1 per day in return; they regularly report receiving extremely poor quality food, including spoiled food. There are also consistent reports of mistreatment, unsafe living conditions, medical neglect, and sexual assault. Navigating the legal procedures around their detention is difficult; at best, these are intentionally opaque. Starting months before the strike began, Eyes on ICE volunteers and participating organizations received a series of handwritten letters from detainees. In March, a letter arrived captioned with a large “S.O.S.” and undersigned by 300 detainees from across various cell units. They detailed horrendous conditions, rapid transfers and deportation hearings, and other forms of torture. Many called specific judges out by name for their cruelty. The strikers demanded that New Jersey governor Mikie Sherrill come to Delaney Hall to meet with them and witness the conditions in the prison. They also called for the very young, very old, and medically infirm be released from the prison; an end to coercive pressure to sign voluntary deportation papers; and a meaningful review of cases and habeas corpus filings. Gabriela Soto’s announcement precipitated a coordinated call for all Eyes on ICE volunteers and their communities to participate in a 24/7 vigil in solidarity with the strikers. May 22, 2026: the hospitality tent outside Delaney Hall. Gabriela Soto holds a sign she made with her family as she announces the hunger strike. The Vigil That vigil began immediately after Gaby made her announcement at noon on May 22. At 2 pm, family members of the detainees who were on strike reported that they were unable to communicate with their loved ones. The detainees typically had access to tablets that could make video calls, but the prison guards had revoked the communication privileges of the units that were on strike in retaliation. This information was confirmed by a person detained in the striking unit 2a/b. About to be deported, he used his final phone time to validate this detail. While other detainees in other units had agreed to the strike, 2a/b was the unit Martin Soto was held in, the unit that had initially announced the strike. By 6 pm, the number of protesters at the vigil had swelled to between thirty and forty people. There were several local media vans on scene. The story garnered a brief mention in the evening news in relation to the other strikes across the country. Outside Delaney Hall on the evening of Friday, May 22. As protesters chanted and sang into the night, detainees could be seen silhouetted in the windows closest to the street—waving, dancing, and placing heart-shaped cutouts against the opaque glass. Their response drove home that the vigil was cutting through their isolation. As the evening went on, a few detainees were released, as usual, one or two at a time, often as a consequence of paying bail. The volunteers carried out their intake process and made sure they were safe and had access to transportation and legal advice. The protest lasted through the night and into the following days without incident. Guards and protesters exchanged insults, but neither side deployed anything stronger. On Saturday, May 23, Gaby shared that her husband Martin, now seen as the primary instigator of the strike, had been offered release if he would call off the strike. According to Gaby, he said, “I don’t want to talk, put me back into my cell.” The alarm system for the building was set off for the day and night, a tactic that Eyes on ICE volunteers have witnessed as a means of psychologically torturing the detainees. The alarm is about the volume of a fire alarm in most high schools, but left on for the entire day and night to prevent sleep. Though guards initially denied him entry, Senator Andy Kim was eventually able to enter the facility. He spent several hours inside, speaking to dozens of detainees. In a speech he made afterwards, joined by Representative Rob Menendez, Kim confirmed most of the claims of the strikers, including the poor food and water quality, unacceptable sanitary conditions, and reports of mistreatment and medical neglect. Opening Salvo Another night passed without incident as the protesters maintained a continuous presence. On Saturdays and Sundays, the facility is open for visitation and families are allowed in. Families continued to come for regular visitation throughout the weekend, bringing children and elders. This gave a familial air to the protest, with children chalking on the driveway leading to the gates and sometimes leading chants. On Saturday evening, Martin’s cell mates reported that ICE agents or guards came to the room to remove Martin to solitary confinement. Each twenty to thirty or more people inside. All thirty of Martin’s cellmates grouped around him and locked arms, refusing to let him be punished for his role in the strike. At about 4 pm on Sunday, May 24, Gaby approached the prison for a scheduled visit with Martin. Once she was inside the fence but had not entered the facility itself, she saw two ICE agents physically carry her husband out of the prison and throw him into the back of one of the white vans used for detainee transfer. Later, when she was eventually permitted to talk with him, she discovered that guards had lured him into leaving his cell by reassuring him that he was going to be released. He followed them to a second room, where ICE officials attempted to interrogate him, then prepared him for transfer and tossed him into a van. A call went out to Eyes on ICE volunteers and to various other leftist and aid groups as far afield as New York and Pennsylvania. Because Delaney Hall receives detainees from a large area, this was not just New Jersey’s fight. The message of Eyes on ICE was simple: “They’re retaliating against the strikers, and we won’t let them disappear even a single one until their demands are heard.” Elected officials who had been planning a congressional oversight visit that week were notified. The US representative for New Jersey, Rob Menendez, arrived later that night for an unannounced visit. He had visited a week prior but had left with the impression that the prison had been prepared in expectation of his inspection. Menendez was allowed into the gates of the prison, but was barred from entry for fourteen hours while a cleaning crew came to dispose of whatever they did not want him to see. He remained in the courtyard in the rain that whole night, trying to check vehicles for transfers and relaying information to protesters outside the gate. The blocking action started immediately with the legal protection of a federal judge’s court order—put in place pending the review of a previously filed Habeas petition barring Martin’s removal from the facility. With the blocking action in place, protesters formed a barrier from orange plastic water tanks commonly used as construction barriers. About 150 protesters stood behind the barrier by 8 pm on Sunday night. Outside Delaney Hall on the evening of May 24. As the night wore on, the crowd thinned to about 75 people, but they successfully stopped each attempted transfer from the facility. Eyes on ICE volunteers attempted to persuade the crowd to respect the property boundaries and refrain from physically obstructing the personal vehicles of GEO Group employees. Newark Police were dispatched several times to escort the transport vans past the crowd; people clearly and calmly explained to them that they were participating in an illegal removal. They disengaged at about 11 pm. Spirits were high, but several protesters argued over tactics. Many did not understand why volunteers asked that GEO Group vehicles be allowed to leave. The crowd did their best to inspect non-transport vehicles as they exited, but some protesters wanted to limit all vehicle movement in and out. Volunteers with Eyes on ICE repeatedly explained their reasoning for not wanting to engage with the police. Many volunteers had been present for the previous year’s protests at the facilities’ opening and did not want a repeat incident. At several points, GEO employees lurched their vehicles through the crowd, hitting people and almost pinning one against a barrier. At 1:30 am that night, a light rain began to fall. Protesters were formed in two groups, one by the main gate composed of between forty and fifty protesters and a smaller group of about ten by a secondary unused gate a hundred yards to the south, called gate five. It had been almost two hours since the agents attempted any transports, and the energy of the protesters was settling for a night’s vigil. Suddenly, approximately twenty ICE agents stormed from the south gate, armed with pepper spray. They shoved through the newly assembled barriers and sprayed several people in the smaller group of sentries. The ICE agents grabbed those who attempted to defend the barrier and threw them to the ground. One woman in her sixties remained at the barrier; three agents shoved her to the ground, picked her up, and threw her back down with considerable force about ten feet away. She was taken to the University Hospital about an hour later for broken ribs and trouble breathing. As soon as they had cleared a pathway, a convoy of ten unmarked vehicles, mostly Jeep compasses, sped out of the facility headed north toward downtown Newark. Later, a suspicion was confirmed that one of the vehicles carried Martin Soto, illegally transporting him to Elizabeth detention center—a smaller ICE facility. Once the vehicle carrying Martin and an escort vehicle were clear of the main body of protesters, the remaining eight cars turned around in the entrance of the Essex County Corrections Facility, a medium-security state prison right next to Delaney Hall. The feds sped recklessly through the protesters on the street, narrowly missing several. They stopped their cars in a line directly in front of the south gate and deployed from their vehicles, one to two agents emerging from each car. Most agents were armed with telescoping batons, and about five carried large cans of pepper spray (likely MK 38, supplied by Safariland). The protesters at the north gate began responding to the ICE agents. Gaby was taken into the hospitality tent and instructed not to leave, as she was four months pregnant. Some protesters stayed behind at the north gate to ensure that the agents were not acting as a decoy. The rest rushed south. Just as they arrived to find that the crew at the south gate had been beaten and sprayed, the agents resumed spraying. However, the parallel parked vehicles on the street partially screened the protesters, and a truck returning from the port with a large shipping container in tow was stopped, further blocking the spray. Some protesters and independent photographers ran into the street to confront or photograph the agents. They were sprayed and chased back to the sidewalk, where agents hit several people with batons and sprayed several more at point-blank range. The entire encounter lasted about three minutes from the ICE agents exiting the gate to the moment they returned to their vehicles and sped south for the night. The pepper spray had severe effects, as most of the protesters that evening lacked adequate PPE. Representative Menendez maintained that he did not see the agents move Martin from the back of the van that he was believed to be in, but Menendez did not claim to have been watching it the whole time. Graffiti directing people in New York City to show up outside Delaney Hall in Newark. May 25: Memorial Day The events of the previous night marked the escalation that set the tone for the following week. A continuous presence of volunteers and protesters maintained the vigil throughout that night; the following morning, approximately ten protesters remained outside the gates of Delaney Hall. Governor Mikie Sherrill was due to arrive at 10 am to attempt entry and give a press briefing at the facility. Menendez remained inside the gates, still barred from entry. At about 7:30 am, a group of ICE agents could be seen staging down Doremus Ave, the road on which Delaney Hall is located. The agents were joined by a BearCat—a police armored personnel carrier. The roughly twenty agents were armed with pepper spray; the agent in the turret of the BearCat sported a FTC PRO pepperball gun. The agents dispersed the last few protesters and tore down the temporary barriers, lifting them into the dumpster beside the south gate. They then staged in front of the gate, standing across from a slowly growing crowd of protesters and journalists. Governor Sherrill arrived with more media in tow to cover her press briefing. She unsuccessfully attempted to enter Delaney Hall, then delivered a speech in front of the gates. Her speech frustrated protesters, as she offered few details about how the strikers’ demands might be met. She also misrepresented some details of the demands and the operations of the facility, suggesting that she had only a superficial understanding of the conflict. The governor departed by 11 am, and tensions between protesters and ICE agents mounted quickly. ICE agents attempted to clear a path through the crowd for a steady stream of transport vehicles. Senator Kim attempted to intervene, negotiating with the ICE agents and the gathering crowd to allow vehicles to pass if he could check them for transfers. Some protesters continued blocking vehicles. For the most part, Kim was denied access to the transport vehicles. While Kim stood between protesters and the agents, still negotiating, a transport approached from the gates. The crowd pressed forward and the agent on the turret of the BearCat opened fire indiscriminately. Afterwards, Kim reported that he felt the sting of something hitting him in the back, and then a chemical burn in his lungs and eyes. The agents also deployed pepper spray, striking many people, including Kim and several of his staffers, who required eye flushing afterwards. Kim eventually gained entry to the facility after personally calling the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Markwayn Mullin. This was possible only because of congress is the source of funding for all DHS operations, which secures them legal power of oversight. Afterwards, Kim was able to confirm that Martin Soto had been transferred. After the melee, the pressure of the crowd diminished as protesters and volunteers regrouped. Throughout the day, reports returned from family that the strikers were being collectively punishment. Most of the strikers were prevented from communicating with anyone outside, including with lawyers or with commissary accounts needed to purchase supplemental food. Some prisoners were forced to stand for extended periods of time, and many were threatened with transfer. Visitation was canceled indefinitely. The strikers reported that they were frustrated that people outside Delaney Hall were focusing on the conditions in the prison, emphasizing their desire for freedom, due process, and the closure of the detention facility. The agents who had attacked the crowd eventually reentered the facility. The rest of the afternoon and evening passed without incident. Throughout the afternoon and evening, protesters built a barricade, tearing up cement bricks from a retaining wall between the prison and the sidewalk. They employed additional scrap metal and refuse from the adjacent train tracks to reinforce the barricade. May 26: The Start of a Three-Day Brawl Once again, at 7 am, ICE agents reinforced by a BearCat deployed from the south gate. Using pepper spray and batons, they cleared a path through the crowd of about twenty protesters. Confrontations between protesters and ICE agents continued. By 4 pm, the crowd had grown to about 60 protesters. As the number of protesters grew, more agents appeared, forming a line. They pulled up three vehicles branded with ICE logos. These vehicles are typically not used for regular immigration enforcement operations; they first showed up in Minneapolis during a retaliatory rampage Greg Bovino led on January 13. They staged the vehicles in front of the gates, with the agents shoulder to shoulder on the sidewalk facing the protesters assembled in the street. As the sun set at 8 pm, the shoving match between agents and protesters settled into a 30-minute rhythm in which agents repeatedly lunged forward across the five feet separating the two lines. First, some agents would deploy pepper spray while others charged forward holding their batons horizontally as a bar at chest height. Once in contact with the arm-locked crowd, they would shove people to the ground, often swinging the batons at people’s knees. Sometimes this push coincided with vehicles leaving or entering the south gate, but often, there were no vehicles coming; it was as if they were adhering to a schedule. The agents deploying the pepper spray repeatedly sought to pull protesters’ protective masks and goggles away from their faces in order to spray directly into their eyes and mouths. At first, the medics treating those impacted by the pepper spray were baffled by how long the effects lasted and how resistant the spray was to decontamination with soap solution. They eventually concluded that ICE had switched to a pepper-gel formulation, likely to compensate for the persistently windy conditions on Doremus Avenue. Three individuals were marked for capture in the course of the night, and agents repeatedly broke through the line of protesters in twos or threes to chase them down. ICE agents incapacitated one of these individuals with a taser, and slammed the other two to the ground. All three were carried through the prison gates. One of the detainees was a volunteer with Eyes on ICE, marked with a red cross and explicitly operating as a medic. The agents flashed their flashlights at him repeatedly, and one protester reported hearing a confirmation of location and target from the agents immediately before they attempted to detain him. Eight agents surrounded and tackled the medic about twenty yards outside the conflict line, and carried him face down back to the prison. Later that evening, all three of the people that ICE had captured that day were left under a bridge about two miles away with all of their possessions. The medic was still marked with his red cross. One of the detainees reported being locked in an unventilated van for almost seven hours with his hands restrained and a possible concussion. May 27 Clashes continued through the night, with the agents using copious amounts of pepper spray. By morning, when many of the protesters had dispersed, the BearCat returned. During an outdoor recreation period, one of the detainees called out to the protesters: “Libertad, libertad, libertad!” Guards were observed mocking the prisoners and attempting to goad them into a confrontation, threatening them with large canisters of what volunteers suspected to be tear gas. The detainees who were still able to call their lawyers reported that the labor strike had forced the prison administrators to clean the bathrooms themselves. The strikers were not allowed to leave their rooms, and there were reports of a strong chemical odor emanating from the ventilation pipes. One ambulance left the facility that evening. One of the hunger strikers was released. Once again, the ICE agents adhered to the 30-minute intervals, repeatedly pushing protesters back, often into heavy traffic. Doremus Avenue serves as an industrial artery, with large cargo trucks comprising much of the traffic. ICE agents repeatedly shoved protesters into the wheels of passing trucks. The agents appeared to be attempting to coordinate their attacks with the passing of traffic. The agents mostly used their batons as barring tools to secure space while other agents swung the batons at the knees of protesters. In the course of the day, several protesters required transport to the hospital, suffering nerve and bone damage from beatings or vehicle strikes. The same woman who had been the first casualty of Sunday night required a return trip to the hospital. She was unable to walk. That evening, protesters intensified their defensive strategy, employing shields constructed from traffic cones. More experienced anti-ICE activists from the Twin Cities, Los Angeles, and Chicago arrived to share tactical experience. Activists from Minnesota reported shock at the intensity of violence on display at the gate. Demonstrators confront ICE agents outside Delaney Hall on Wednesday, May 27. May 28 Governor Sherrill held a press briefing on the afternoon of Thursday, May 28, announcing a need for DHS to step back from crowd control functions at the gate and declaring that the state police would take their place the following day. She also announced the establishment of a “First Amendment Zone” to “protect” the protesters. During the day, prison officials spray-painted a line marking the boundary of the property of Delaney Hall. In fact, apart from the private property of the prison, the entire sidewalk and street is public property, and should legally require no special demarcation regarding where people’s rights begin and end. At about 1:30 pm, advocates and family members began receiving calls from detainees relaying that about forty guards from the Corrections Emergency Response Team (CERT) had entered their unit and began beating selected targets among the strikers, with ICE agents joining in. This retaliation occurred when CERT entered the striking unit 2a/b to remove a detainee who had been translating for the strikers’ communications with advocates outside. The strikers, gathered in a common area between cells, locked arms around that person. The agents and CERT team beat them and deployed CS gas in the hallways to drive the strikers back into their rooms. Then they opened each door in the unit and sprayed a heavy dose of pepper spray into the poorly ventilated rooms. Four ambulances carried away severely injured detainees later that afternoon, and nearly all of those in the striking women’s unit (unit 1) were transferred out of the prison. The contact between the line of ICE and the line of protesters replicated the established pattern of the previous day, intensifying at sundown, then becoming less frequent in the early morning as the number of protesters dwindled. During the day, the agents used batons less, opting for direct hand-to-hand confrontation. They would grab demonstrators’ clothing or PPE and use it to throw the protester to the ground. The agents appeared to be rotating on a nightly basis; Thursday night’s agents were visibly larger than their predecessors. They bodily lifted smaller protesters in order to throw them at the ground or into oncoming traffic. They continued to use batons, spray, and pepper balls, but to a lesser degree. Once again, a number of protesters were injured and required medical attention. ICE agents prepare to brutalize protesters outside Delaney Hall on Thursday, May 28. May 29 On Friday, May 29, reports began filtering in that strikers were eating again. The strikers communicated a new demand that outside medical treatment be offered to the members of unit 2a/b who had been beaten. A number of Facebook groups announced a counter-protest at the prison planned for Saturday at 10 am. Pro-ICE counter-protesters had been appearing in growing numbers throughout the week, though never exceeding a handful. They typically arrived during the day and stood with the ICE agents, antagonizing the protesters. Newark Police, in coordination with New Jersey State Police, began staging at the two roads intersecting Doremus about a half mile north and south of the prison. They put new barriers in place. The ICE agents were still visibly staged at the mouth of the south gate. An additional line of state and local police formed between the protesters and the ICE agents, facing the protesters. They conducted a few arrests, but much of the day passed without conflict. All non-commercial traffic was blocked from Doremus Avenue, forcing protesters and volunteers to park on the perpendicular roads, Roanoke Avenue and Wilson Avenue. As 9 pm approached, the crowd of protesters, holding steady at about one hundred people, received warning that they would be subject to arrest if they remained. State Police in riot gear closed off both ends of the street. At about 9:30 pm, a third line of State Police in riot gear appeared 300 yards north of the gathered protesters. The protesters formed their own line, facing north, and waited to see what sort of assault was coming. Assuming a shield wall formation, the police began shooting mortar-fired tear gas behind the assembled protesters, into the direction that they were ordering the protesters to disperse. The police advanced, attacking the protesters with flash-bang grenades and less-lethal 40 mm foam rounds. Throughout the confrontation, they also used stinger pellet rounds, while ICE agents fired pepper balls from their position on the flank of the retreating protesters. The CS gas was largely ineffective, as the wind was blowing the gas from the south to the north, where the police line was formed. Mounted horse units moved in front of the advancing shield wall and charged the slowly retreating protesters. A photo supplied by a protester showing spent munitions that the New Jersey State Police fired at demonstrators on the night of May 29. State Police fired tear gas directly at independent media journalists, hitting at least one person. Reporters from national media outlets suddenly disappeared into their vehicles and did not film the advance. It is possible they were instructed to do so ahead of time. As the protesters made contact with the shield wall of police, some shoving took place. The protesters eventually dispersed, retreating to their vehicles. Police arrested some of them. It was eventually learned from the police that the goal of the action was to open space for a shift change at the prison. The New Jersey Attorney General released a statement about the clashes between State Police and the protesters, characterizing the protesters as the instigators. Absurdly, they accused the protesters of attacking the police with tear gas, directly contradicting ample video documentation of what actually happened. A Department of Homeland Security vehicle damaged during a protest outside Delaney Hall on May 29. May 30 Newark Mayor Ras Baraka announced a 9 pm curfew, calling for “order” in the streets. Newark Police erected metal corral barriers in front of their line facing the street and created a separation between the designated spaces for protest and counter-protest. Over two hundred people assembled, despite the ban on parking on the entire street. Several hundred police were present as well, from multiple departments, both local and state. All this time, the volunteers at the hospitality tent had been organizing to receive people as they were released, as between one and three detainees had been released each day over the preceding three days. Volunteers also continued organizing peaceful protest events including prayer circles, singing, and dancing. Conflicts continued between volunteers and protesters who wanted to block vehicles. Multiple chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America had been called to the protest by the Eyes on ICE volunteers, with the request to train and assist in marshalling the crowd. At the most, between twenty and thirty individuals participated in the counterprotest. About eight of them claimed to represent the Proud Boys, arriving in shirts and masks branded with their signature logo. One carried a bottle of bear mace. No physical confrontations occurred and they eventually left at about 2 pm. Outside Delaney Hall on the afternoon of Saturday, May 30. Photograph by Fizzy Fox Photographer. The rest of the day passed without incident until the 9 pm curfew. Once again, the State Police staged to the north; but this time, they deployed the shield wall to the south of the crowd. They advanced on the crowd the same way they had the previous night, firing tear gas over the heads of protesters while throwing gas canisters and flash-bang grenades in front of them. Horse units deployed again, but this time, the protesters were less willing to give ground. Police pushed the protesters back to the part of the street directly in front of the south gate. At that point, Newark Police were attempting to hold the barrier fences between the police line and the street, perpendicular to the advancing shield wall. None of the local police were equipped with PPE; they began choking and covering their faces with their uniforms as clouds of gas wafted into their line. Protesters grabbed the dividing fence and pulled it away from the police, repurposing it as a barrier between themselves and the advancing shield wall. The Newark Police retreated into the prison gates. This time, protesters clashed more directly with the State Police, pushing back with makeshift shields and holding on to the barriers that they had pulled away from the local police. The police used same crowd control weapons again, eventually forcing the crowd of people north toward Roanoke Avenue. They made about a dozen arrests as the crowd retreated and inflicted severe injuries on several protesters, primarily by means of rubber bullets and other less-lethal rounds but also by slamming their shields into protesters. A confrontation outside Delaney Hall on the evening of Saturday, May 30. Photograph by Fizzy Fox Photographer. As the line of conflict moved past the hospitality tent, the police targeted several volunteers with Eyes on ICE and its affiliated aid organizations for arrest. The protesters slowly backed down Doremus until they reached the intersection of Roanoke and Doremus, where a second shield wall of riot police was waiting. The police stopped there and faced the remaining protesters for almost half an hour while the protesters led chants and gave speeches. Someone started a fire using the tires and debris scattered over the road. The protesters chanted “When the streets get hot, ICE MELTS! When the streets burn, ICE MELTS!” as they prepared for what appeared to be a kettling action. The confrontation fizzled when a person in a wheelchair, accompanied by someone pushing it, approached the police line and began asking to be let through. Both people identified themselves as press; one was an Associated Press photographer and the other, a New York Times reporter. Both were displaying press credentials on lanyards. The person in the wheelchair informed the police that their knee was broken and they needed to pass the shield wall to reach immediate medical attention. The police were silent. This encounter lasted for ten minutes, with the protesters offering to back up to convince the police to open a passage for the injured person. With no audible instructions from the police, the journalists continued to plead; eventually, the police opened a small hole in their line. The injured person asked several times if it was safe to approach; the police gave no discernible answer. Eventually, without instruction from the police, the two passed through the opening. Police issued warnings to the remaining protesters, arresting and charging a few of them. A fire down the street from Delaney Hall on the evening of Saturday, May 30. May 31: The Kettle Far fewer protesters arrived on Sunday, May 31. The entire street was closed to nonessential traffic. Those who did show up stood at the intersections with Roanoke to the north or Wilson to the south. For the first time, police did not let in volunteers to receive released detainees. At midday, Governor Sherrill held a press briefing, announcing a coordinated effort to cooperate with local police to take over and eventually close Delaney Hall through legal means. As the curfew approached, between fifty and sixty protesters gathered at the intersection of Wilson and Doremus, facing the State Police at the new roadblock. Some protesters pleaded with the police to reconsider their actions, informing them that the protesters were unarmed and holding their hands up to demonstrate this. At one point, people on foot who had traveled to Doremus to visit friends in the Essex County Corrections Facility walked into the middle of the standoff and, not knowing what exactly was going on, joined the protesters. They down sat in front of the protesters, who gave them helmets to protect them from less lethal munitions. All of the medics departed, pleading with the protesters to do the same, arguing that they had sustained too many injuries and arrests to remain in danger. At about 10 pm, the police began firing rubber bullets sporadically. Officers could be seen coordinating to target specific protesters. Some protesters began singing, “All that we are saying is give peace a chance,” hands raised in the air. Police received the order to advance and began rushing toward the protesters, shooting rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades. The protesters turned and ran. Synchronizing their movements, the police encircled the retreating crowd with a shield line. They formed a half circle around the protesters, backing them up against a wall. For ten minutes, they periodically picked off protesters at the edge of the kettle. Four police officers seized one of the people who had happened upon the protest while on their way to visit the Essex facility, dragging him into the wall of shields in a seated position. The wall of police closed around him, concealing the officers as they beat and pepper-sprayed him. The police closed in three steps in unison. Then they announced that individuals with “verified” press credentials would be allowed to leave. An officer checked press passes as at least ten independent journalists left the kettle. After pushing the journalists to a distance of over a hundred yards away, the police mass-arrested the remaining detainees. They made a total of sixty-four known arrests that night, including mutual aid volunteers. All the arrestees were held overnight and released with court summonses after twenty hours in custody. Most of the charges were “disorderly persons” and resisting arrest. Demonstrators use traffic cones to attempt to extinguish tear gas canisters on the night of May 30. We recommend immersing canisters in water to extinguish them; you can learn about how to do so safely here. Aftermath The next day, Mayor Baraka announced that he would not be participating in cooperation with the State Police or ICE. He cited the misuse of police force, claiming that it was putting Newark’s own officers in danger. Governor Sherrill also made an announcement, presenting a plan to close Delaney Hall by bringing a lawsuit against GEO Group for illegally barring state inspectors from accessing the facilities’ medical units, bathrooms, and sleeping areas. She characterized the Eyes on ICE volunteers who had been rendering mutual aid and legal assistance to detainees and their families as “peaceful protesters, there for the past year,” implying that the Radical Hospitality Tent was some sort of state-sanctioned, palatable protest center. This is how her remarks were reported on outlets like Fox News. She also announced that she would be handing management of the street over to the Newark Police and withdrawing most of the State Police. On Monday, as a limited number of Eyes on ICE volunteers were allowed back to the tent, they discovered investigative units from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Homeland Security Investigations inside, ransacking it. The agents had overturned everything inside the tent; many items were missing including diapers, an electric cooler, announcements of prayer gatherings posted on a bulletin board, and personal possessions. The hospitality tent still stands, though it will take professional cleaning crews to decontaminate it of CS gas residue. The volunteers are exhausted, but those who were arrested have been released, albeit with charges. Eyes on ICE continues working to ensure some degree of independent monitoring at the detention facility as well as supporting detainees and their families. New Jersey is still reeling from the week of vicious retaliation for the strike from both the state and federal governments. Narratives about the protests are regularly misrepresented in corporate news outlets. Nonetheless, centrists who were mostly sympathetic to the volunteers before this week have experienced collective disillusionment with state authority, especially with their Democratic governor, Mikie Sherrill. It remains to be seen whether conditions will improve for the detainees in Delaney Hall. Yet their story has been elevated to a national audience, forcing another discussion about police violence and immigration enforcement. For now, ICE continues to operate from their field office in downtown Newark at 614 Frelinghuysen Avenue. An increasing number of people have been released from the facility, including some who managed to obtain the attention of congresspeople on oversight visits. Many of those released have expressed profound gratitude for the nationwide expressions of solidarity, and the solidarity of the protesters, which they could hear from within their cells. The strike at Delaney Hall has sparked strikes in other facilities around the country. Visitation is set to resume soon with new restrictions. The people who stand at the gates of Delaney Hall, day in and day out, will continue to stand there. Many will continue working to dismantle the unjust immigration system, as they did before the opening of Delaney Hall. Anti-ICE protesters will regroup and converge on the next flashpoint, wherever that may be. Their numbers will likely be bolstered by new companions from New York and New Jersey, who will add their recent experience defying ICE to the movement’s collective memory. The fight will continue as they refine their tactics and strategies. Further Reading “To Demand Freedom”: The Hunger Strike at Delaney Hall Detention Center A Demonstrator’s Guide to Understanding Riot Munitions—And How to Defend against Them

On May Day, anarchists in Portland participated in two black blocs, adding a confrontational edge to public protests. As anger against the economy and the government spreads alongside desperation and despair, it’s up to us to create opportunities for collective action. Anarchists organized various events in the lead-up to May Day in Portland, Oregon. On May Day’s eve, we held a ritual for the anarchist dead, mourning both friends and forebears. Such practices are important not just to facilitate emotional processing, but also as means of torch-carrying and world-making. If that had been all that anarchists had organized, it would have sufficed, but it was just the beginning. May first proper began when a prominant reactionary, counter-protester, and streamer Tommy Allen, known on the internet as Tommyboi or Tommy4Trump, woke up to find that his car had been vandalized. Tommy Allen walks the line between MAGA and neo-Nazi, sporting apparel connected to European Kindred, a neo-Nazi prison and street gang. A few weeks ago, he was apparently bear-maced after attacking a presentation on the Breaking the ICE: Lessons from the Resistance in Minnesota tour. That same morning, the local chapter of the Sunrise Movement staged a sit-in blockade at the Hilton-owned Porter Portland hotel in response to their decision to house mercenaries from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Border Patrol, and other Department of Homeland Security agencies. The sit-in ended when Portland Police arrested eight accused participants. Sunrise Movement PDX also made the news recently for being the first chapter to experience lawfare attacks over their nighttime “Wide Awake” noise demos targeting hotels that house federal agents. It may seem tragic that these young people—who wholeheartedly desire to stop the machine that places profit above life—imagine it is useful to get arrested on purpose, but if we cannot offer points of entry for them to encounter other methods and more critical analysis, then we are partly responsible for the tragedy. Around noon, a radical community fair got underway at the departure point of the “Workers & Migrants Unite!” march that was scheduled to begin three hours later. Groups like the Industrial Workers of the World and anarchist literature distribution projects spent three hours tabling and talking to interested passersby and demonstrators. The Free Society People’s Library brought their mobile truck and distributed books and pamphlets about abolitionist, communist, and anarchist struggle. There were many liberal and authoritarian socialist groups tabling, as well, but anarchist materials were as popular as ever. The Workers & Migrants Unite March Months ahead of May Day 2026, a loose cluster of anarchists learned that an array of more or less radical organizations were calling for a “Workers & Migrants Unite!” May Day march. The organizers included anarchists, but also the left flanks of unions, anti-deportation groups, and hierarchical political parties ranging from social democrats to niche variants of Stalinism, Trotskism, and Maoism. With so much antagonism already in the air towards capitalism and the state, many surmised that it would worth engaging with the march as a space of encounter. Ever since federal mercenaries attacked the ICE Out of Labor march, opposition to police has been fomenting in rank-and-file unions, anti-deportation front groups, and other circles around Portland. The organizers of the march explicitly declared that they would not be working with the police and would use the march as an oppurtunity to highlight local sites of capitalist and police-state infrastructure. It looked like a great oppurtunity to spread anarchist ideas and action models and to join forces with other disaffected people. Of course, it was still possible that attacks on capitalist and state infrastructure would be seen as something coming from “outside” the movement, allegedly “giving them [the Trump regime and its supporters] what they want,” and self-appointed or org-deployed peace-enforcers could no doubt be a problem. The rough plan to deal with this political terrain was to join the big march as a black bloc with anarchist banners and flags and, at the very least, to give out zines and handbills. If the oppurtunity arose and the crowd seemed comfortable with it, other activities could take place, as well. People made banners out of painters cloth decorated with black paint and flags out of black fabric, staples, and dowels. These can be transported in guitar cases if it is important not to attract attention. After the community fair, anarchists bloc’d up, growing in numbers to about two dozen. One person who had just donned black and a mask and was making their way to the others, was stopped by a passerby, who asked, “Who are you with?” The question gave the lone anarchist pause. There are many different reasons someone might ask such a thing. Still, they decided to go with honesty. “I’m with the anarchists,” they answered. The inquirer persisted. “Who’s that?” “We’re against corporations, capitalism, the police, and government. Oh, and racism.” “All right, I’m with you.” Thousands participated in the march. Anarchists distributed zines and handbills to hundreds of them. About a dozen people made the “thank you for your service” joke, which is also a way for people who attended a march in their normal clothes to flag their support for potential self-defense or direct action. The bloc shouted chants that pushed an insurrectionary and revolutionary position amid the tepid slogans of the surrounding groups, joining the other groups for the more revolutionary chants. Some moved out of the bloc to sabotage parking meters and paint slogans and anarchist symbols. Anarchist graffiti appeared on the Portland World Trade center, which houses the Portland Metro Chamber, a pro-development, pro-cop, and anti-worker group. All of this was met with support from the crowd. The only person with a problem was an aggresive man filming with his phone who took issue with people sabotaging the meters, despite the fact that parking enforcement in Portland is particularly draconian and largely serves to fund transit cops. This chud was successfully rebuffed, his camera often being blocked by an umbrella. Some speculated that he was a Democrat who believed outlandish theories about anarchists and antifa. He is still a chud, insofar as a chud is anyone who engages in extra-state repression; the term comes from a science fiction movie in which Cannibal Humanoid Underground Dwellers do what the state and capitalists cannot do themselves without dirtying their image. Other more right-wing chuds showed up, but they hid behind the small handful of uniformed cops. The bloc at this march was less impressive than what we have previously seen on May Day in Portland, but it was undoubtly a success. After the march, the bloc dispersed with no incidents. Some left the streets for the day, while others headed to the starting location of the next demonstration, which would be marching on the infamous ICE Field Office on Macadam Ave. Between the two marches, Portland State University students occupied a building for a few hours in an attempt to push forward the struggle to fight cuts, obtain better adjunct working conditions, and resist repression of student activists. The students eventually surrendered in response to an overwhelming police presence; thankfully, no one was arrested. Upon leaving the building, students announced, “Nothing is over, we will be back.” “All out for May Day!” March The second march of the day was called for by Freedom Road Socialist Organization and the aligned group Portland Contra las Deportaciones. FRSO, for all their faults (which include peace-policing), have been trying to push the struggle against ICE to include actual interventions resisting raids, in contrast to others’ stance in favor of only observing. They have also sought to ensure that the government of the City of Portland’s collaboration and facilitation of ICE doesn’t go unnoticed, routinely organizing home demos at the mayor’s house. This “All out for May Day!” march to the ICE Field Office and the ensuing siege went pretty much as expected. People gathered in Elizabeth Caruthers Park and made their way to the Field Office; after night fell, there were probably a hundered or so people surrounding the front of the Office with a bloc likely twice the size of the one that attended the earlier march. The only unexpected detail was that the feds switched from using the gated front driveway to using the rear driveway, which is supposed to be for emergencies only. As the night passed, feds from inside the building did survaillance while the the Oregon State Police and the Portland Police Bureau did their dirty work. These local and state cops cleared the driveway with brute force and made several arrests; officers punched people in the head who were already on the ground and engaged in other typical cop activity. This contrasted with the earlier “Workers & Migrants Unite!” march, at which we had only seen a handful of uniformed cops, with some motorcycle cops tracing the march’s perimeter at a distance of about two blocks, a couple liaison cops positioned to protect chuds or key choke points, and a few plainclothes cops tailing the march. Of the cops in plainclothes, the two that were the most identifiable were Lt. Franz Shoeing and Sgt. Ty Engstrom; they also made their way to the ICE Field Office eventually, where they were accompanied by a third cop in a white hoodie rocking what could only be described as a “copstache.” The differing police tactics at the two marches illustrates the “good cop” and “bad cop” methods of crowd control. At the first march, where there were more witnesses, the police left the demonstrators to police each other—a strategy that usually works, thanks to march marshals, peacekeepers, and concerned citizens. At the second march, which was rowdier, potentially more actually disruptive to the logistics of the state, but also more out of the way, the police employed violence without restraint in defense of property and their compatriots in the federal forces. Police violence should come as no surprise. It is more surprising that there was support for confrontation at the big-tent May Day demonstration. This should inform future actions. And a Car Bombing On May 2, someone apparently crashed a Nissan Rogue with pipe bombs and propane tanks inside it into the Multnomah Athletic Club in Portland, which caters to a wealthy clientele. This destroyed the club’s first floor, inflicting millions of dollars in damages. The only casualty was the driver, who was found in the flaming wreckage of the car. This comes on the heels of several related individual expressions of anger and despair, including the Kimberly-Clark Warehouse arson in Ontario, California, the firebombing of the gate of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s home, and the attempted attack at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Condemning such attacks, to paraphrase Emma Goldman, would be like condemning lightning: so long as tyranny and exploitation exist, there will probably be arsons and bombings and assassinations. This is almost a matter of physics: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. However, to regard these attacks as a sort of memetic path to insurrection misses the point. Yet an uptick in sporadic attacks does not add up to a viable revolutionary practice. People are taking action because they are desperate, but the problem is that these actions do not make it any easier for other desperate people to act, and they send the message that the inexorable consequence of taking action is defeat and capture or death. Even Luigi Mangione, who carried the most widely resonant and discursively generative action of this kind in years, was caught. The fact that it took some days for the authorities to catch him contributed significantly to the interest he attracted. We need to demonstrate that it is possible to take action together, to get away with it, and to act again—to show that action can be a basis for connection, rather than a final rejection of hope. We need to demonstrate an affective position and ethic that others can adopt and iterate on. The fact that people are increasingly desperate makes it all the more pressing to send a message to the disaffected—especially those who recognize the limits of conventional protest and the dead ends of electoral politics—that they are not alone, that many other people have reached the same conclusions and feel the same urgency. The emotional atmosphere of the second Trump administration has successfully intimidated many people out of acting boldly, confrontationally, and collectively. Near the end of the Biden era, participants in the fight against Cop City in Atlanta wrote that the authorities had sought to “scoop the middle frequencies” out of the movement, creating a gulf between legal public actions and illegal individual actions: But it is precisely the middle frequencies of a movement that give it its punch—making its rhythms infectious, enabling it to move people and draw them into a process of transformation. Without these frequencies, the results will be muddy and indistinct. If activists cannot re-assert their right to gather publicly for “mid-range” activities, nocturnal sabotage and civic actions will drift further and further apart, becoming mutually unintelligible and incapable of reaching those outside the movement. Regardless of individual preferences, everyone must recognize the importance of participatory, confrontational activity. —”Don’t Stop: Continuing the Fight against Cop City” One of the ways we can attempt to reach the disaffected is by going to the beacons that attempt to draw them in, such as big May Day marches or even “No Kings!” marches. However, this may not succeed in situations where the mechanisms of political capture are already effectively implemented—for example, you’re not going to have an easy time getting proletarians to see things your way at a Trump rally. Likewise, passing out handbills at a gas station, where so many people are being forced to think about economics and geopolitics right now whether they wish to or not, would probably be more effective than trying to court people at a Democrat campaign event. All in all, it was a great May Day, and it’s only the beginning of something, as many of us are stretching our legs and testing the waters again after a downturn in anarchist activity. Let us heed the advice of Alfredo Bonanno, with whom many anarchists may have unknowningly shared the streets on various May Days, and not abandon intermediate struggles that could mutate in an insurrectionary direction. “[Dynamite can explode in the hands of someone who doesn’t know how to use it](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alfredo-m-bonanno-revolutionary-struggle-and-insurrection.” Let us not leave those who are compelled to take a next step in struggle out in the cold without effective techniques or insurgent horizons. Let us demonstrate that there is something effective that we can do together. Let’s fight for social revolution, in earnest. Cheers to comrades who took to the streets the world over. Down with capitalism and the state. Down with borders, prisons, and police. Away with any future that still includes exploitation, domination, and class society. Hurrah for anarchy!