Many of the people arrested during last weekend’s confrontation outside Newark’s Delaney Hall migrant detention center were not from New Jersey, and several had traveled from across the country, according to Newark Police Department information and arrest records reviewed by The Post.
Authorities said at least 12 anti-ICE demonstrators were taken into custody on allegations that included assaulting federal agents and damaging vehicles. Among them, four individuals were from Washington state, Colorado, Arizona, and Illinois, records show.
Others arrested included one person from Connecticut and five from New York, most of whom were described as recent arrivals to the city. Only three of those arrested were New Jersey residents, despite the fact that tensions around the facility have been escalating locally for the past three weeks.
The unrest began after roughly 300 detainees at Delaney Hall launched a hunger strike, alleging inhumane conditions inside the detention center. Since then, protests outside the facility have intensified, at times erupting into violent clashes with law enforcement.
According to social media information cited by The Post, at least two of those arrested appear to have ties to one of the dark money groups that has been pushing slogans such as “shut down Delaney Hall” and “abolish ICE” since the demonstrations began.
Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a New Jersey Republican, said he believes the violence reflects a broader coordinated campaign. “There’s an organized effort to create anarchy. It is insane to me,” Van Drew told The Post. “This is America. We have the rule of law and that has to be stopped.”
Some of the arrested include:
- Zion Napier, a 28-year-old, long-haired radical activist seen in police video jumping on cars and smashing windows. The Seattle resident, who worked at the Emerald City’s oldest marine construction firm, Seaborn Companies, was charged with three counts of criminal mischief.
- Mariano Anthony Perez, 31, trekked from Phoenix and was nabbed for punching a Homeland Security Investigations special agent in the face, after he tried to remove Perez from blocking the entrance to the detention facility.
- Thomas Clemens, 30, from Chicago, completed a doctorate degree at the University of Colorado in 2019 and until December, and worked as a traveling physical therapist in rural Washington, New Mexico and Hawaii, records show. While he worked alongside patients, he was touting causes online that included Black Lives Matter in COVID-era Facebook posts, where he identified himself as a vaccinated “frontline worker” and urged others to get the jab. Clemens, who was charged with aggravated assault of a law enforcement officer and hindering apprehension, declined to comment.
- Connecticut-native Rayaan Baywa, 22, is an actor with the Stonehill Theatre Company and once played the leader of a kidnapping gang in “Murder on the Orient Express.” His experiences with “bigotry have helped me be extra attentive to my peers of color,” he claimed in his online resume. Baywa declined to comment.
- Self-described trans photographer Persephone Ambriz-Squires, 27, who lists Bergdorf-Goodman and Saks Fifth Avenue as interests on social media, is from Albuquerque, growing up in a $1.6 million pad, according to public records. The now Brooklyn resident was arrested for rioting and failure to disperse.
- Sarah Sullivan, 25, from upstate High Falls, whose literary agency owner mother and research executive father had their wedding announcement in the New York Times in 1996. Sullivan is the great grand-daughter of Lawrence Upjohn, chairman and part of family behind pharma giant The Upjohn Company, which brought to market blockbuster drugs like Xanax and Motrin. She was charged with rioting and failure to disperse.
- Julianna Wurst from Old Bridge, New Jersey, features the grim reaper on her Facebook page. The 19-year-old includes an anti-west, Marxist rally cry on her bio: “The empire must fall.”
Far-left organizations have supplied protestors with military goggles, helmets, knee and shin pads to face off with federal officials — as they broadcast the chaos to millions of followers on social media.
At least two have connections to the radical nonprofit Sunrise Movement, among the organizers of the Delaney Hall mayhem.
Drew Larsen, 29, lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, but hails from the small historic town of Frederick, Maryland, an hour outside DC, where he was a photographer for the local branch of the Sunrise Movement, according to an Instagram post from 2020.
Solomon Dunston, 28, who was arrested for rioting and failure to disperse and is one of the few who actually grew up in New Jersey, touted the Sunrise Movement on his Facebook page, urging others to join the group.
The nonprofit is funded by megadonors that include far-left billionaire George Soros and boasts $2.6 million in revenue and $4.9 million in assets, according to its 2024 tax filings.
“For 19 days…Sunrise organizers have been on the ground at Delaney Hall in New Jersey” it bragged on its Instagram, along with daily pictures and videos of the standoff.
The organization, founded in 2017 as a climate activist group, has since pivoted to anti-ICE mayhem, including chaotic protests in Minnesota.
Critics said the Delaney protests are far from grassroots.
“They come in with overwhelming resources, any objective person who just looks at it from a 30,000 feet point of view would say that’s not organic,” said former prosecutor Chuck Flint.
“It’s a web of organizations, transactions and then you’ve got these people who recruit these individuals that I would call mules — and they throw them out in front and use them like a mule, the way that a cartel would.”
None of the other arrested protestors answered calls or returned The Post’s messages. The Sunrise Movement also didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.
