On Memorial Day, May 26, 2026, ICE agents pepper-sprayed Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) outside Delaney Hall, the 1,000-bed privately run ICE detention facility in Newark where roughly 300 detainees were on hunger and work strike over alleged medical neglect and living conditions.
Kim had been attempting to mediate. He told reporters he was trying to negotiate an arrangement where immigration advocates — not armed ICE agents — would inspect vehicles leaving the facility to check whether detainees were inside. When ICE agents began pushing the crowd back and firing projectiles containing chemical irritants, Kim placed himself between the crowd and the agents, put his arms up, and was engulfed in the spray. He later said he had difficulty breathing.
Kim called Delaney Hall “a failure” and said “the only way to make this right for our communities is to shut it down and make sure the failures we've seen never happen again.” Rep. Mikie Sherrill, who had separately attempted to visit Delaney Hall, was denied access. The Trump administration's ICE expansion has produced a documented pattern of agent use-of-force incidents at and around detention facilities; this is the first publicly reported instance in which a sitting United States senator was directly hit with a chemical agent deployed by federal officers.