The Hunger Strikes Are Spreading From California to New Jersey (5/26/26)
Solidarity with Delaney Hall and Adelanto. Plus helping pass a data center moratorium in New York, stopping a court hijacking in Kansas and more
TOO LONG, DIDN’T READ
More than 300 immigrants on hunger strike at Delaney Hall and 20 at Adelanto – help amplify their protests, demand media coverage, tell Congress to pay attention and offer financial support to folks behind barbed wire
Conservatives unhappy about Kansas supreme court decisions are trying to change the way justices are picked – phonebank to help Kansas United for Impartial Courts stop them, kick off tomorrow
Mass call Thursday at 8PM ET for new campaign to build pressure for holding DOGE accountable
If you have questions, comments, and especially submissions for actions, please email us at roganslisttips@gmail.com!
HUNGER STRIKES SPREADING IN ICE DETENTION
On Friday, about 300 people being held by ICE at the Delaney Hall detention facility in Newark, New Jersey went on a hunger and labor strike, demanding the release of the elderly, young and seriously ill and injured and the shutdown of the camp. They called out a familiar list of abuses: medical neglect, no air conditioning, unsanitary bathrooms, lack of clean food and water, abusive guards (read a letter from the detainees here). They also asked to meet with New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill, who yesterday attempted to visit with them and was denied entry by federal agents.
The response from the Trump Administration was to transfer strike organizer Marvin Soto (after protesters outside blocked the exits for hours) and to deny the strike was happening at all. It’s now entering Day Five.
This isn’t the only ICE facility where those behind barbed wire have resorted to a hunger strike. As we covered last week, at least 20 people at the Adelanto ICE detention camp in California are also refusing food in protest of terrible conditions and lack of due process. Both camps are run by the GEO Group.
These folks are putting their own health at risk because it’s one of the few options available to them to protest. We need to have their backs. Here’s some ways we can help:
📢 HELP AMPLIFY NEWS ABOUT THE STRIKE. We can follow along with and signal boost developments at Delaney Hall by following Cosecha New Jersey on Instagram and Facebook and Sussex Visibility Brigade here. For Adelanto, we can do the same with the Shut Down Adelanto Coalition, No Concentration Camps in California, and the Defend Migrants Alliance. We can also share these graphics. 📢
📺 KEEP DEMANDING MEDIA ATTENTION. While New York and Los Angeles local outlets have run stories on these strikes, neither has quite attracted a national groundswell, and thus far little of the coverage has acknowledged that these aren’t isolated incidents. (There have been previous hunger strikes in the detention camp archipelago, including at the North Lake Processing Facility in Michigan last month.) Let’s urge them to cover the protests. 📺
🗣️ DEMAND ATTENTION AND ACTION FROM CONGRESS. We’ve seen multiple members of Congress show up to Delaney Hall for inspections this weekend, but the Adelanto strike hasn’t gotten nearly as much attention, and there are still far too many of our elected officials who have refused to use their power to shine a light on what’s happening inside the camps. Especially if we’re from Southern California, New York or New Jersey, let’s reach out to our reps and demand they visit the hunger strikers – we can find scripts to use here. 🗣️
🗣️ We can also urge New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill to make another attempt to meet with the strikers and emphasize our support for the demands outlined here. We can find her phone number here and email here. 🗣️
🗣️ Adelanto folks have called for a phone call barrage to local and state officials demanding action. We can find targets and scripts here. The New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice is asking folks to sign up here to get involved with phone zaps, assembly parties and other remote roles. 🗣️
🪧 ORGANIZE LOCALLY. Make The Road States has put together a terrific action guide on how we can organize in our communities against corporate collaborators and our local concentration camps and proposed human warehouses we can put to use. 🪧
💵 PROVIDE FINANCIAL SUPPORT FOR THOSE INSIDE THE CAMPS. We can donate to commissary accounts for those in Adelanto here and folks in Delaney Hall here, support families of those held in Delaney Hall here and donate to help CLUE Justice and SOMA Community Cares bond out folks in detention here and here. 💵
💵 Delaney Hall hunger strike organizer Marvin Soto is now reportedly facing federal charges – ICE had previously been holding been behind bars without charge. His wife Gabriela has a GoFundMe to help him cover the costs of a lawyer. We can donate to support them here. 💵
✍🏼 Organizers in Adelanto have asked for us to upload letters of support they can share with the hunger strikers. We can do so at Tinyurl.com/LettersForHungerStrikers or here. ✍🏽
PHONEBANK FOR A FIRST-IN-THE-NATION DATA CENTER MORATORIUM BILL
So far, the battle to stop data centers has primarily been fought and won at the local level. But increasingly we’re expanding our resistance to these energy bill-raising, water resource-straining, emissions-increasing projects to state capitals, too. New York could soon be the first state in the nation to pass a moratorium on building new data centers, with advocates pushing for the passage of a three-year pause on the permitting of new ones in Senate Bill 9144A/Assembly Bill 10141A. The legislation would require the state Department of Environmental Conservation to develop regulations that could be adopted to mitigate their damaging effects during that time.
The current legislative session is scheduled to end June 4th, and with the failure to pass the budget on time squeezing the schedule, advocates want to make a hard push to ensure this bill doesn’t slip off the agenda.
☎️ Food & Water Watch will be hosting phonebanks TONIGHT 7:00-8:30PM ET, TOMORROW from noon to 1:30PM ET and Friday from 11:00AM-12:30PM ET, reaching out to folks in key state legislative districts and patching them through to their elected officials in support of the moratorium. We can sign up to join them here. ☎️
HELP STOP CONSERVATIVES FROM HIJACKING THE KANSAS SUPREME COURT – VOTE AUGUST 4TH
Ready to get back into the fight for power in state courts? On August 4th, Kansans will weigh in on a constitutional amendment aimed at ending their state’s current merit-based process for selecting supreme court justices and replacing it with partisan elections, and we’re rallying to stop it.
Proponents claim their goal here is empowering the public, but their real agenda is no mystery: right wingers like Attorney General Kris Kobach and the folks at Americans for Prosperity are angry about the state high court’s decisions protecting reproductive freedom and voting rights and increasing state funding of public schools, and by changing the selection methods they hope to allow billionaire and corporate money to swing the justices towards overturning them. As a Wichita Eagle columnist put it, the big winners if this amendment passes would be the forced birthers and the Koch network.
☎️ Kansas United for Impartial Courts will be kicking off their campaign to defeat this amendment TOMORROW at 7PM ET/6PM CT. They’ll then be running phonebanks on Tuesdays 7-9:30PM ET, Thursdays 7-9:30PM ET, and Saturdays 2-4:30PM ET throughout the summer. We can sign up to join them here. ☎️
TAKE PART IN A CAMPAIGN FOR DOGE ACCOUNTABILITY – CALL THURSDAY
Elon Musk’s DOGE led an all-out attack on our government, upending millions of lives – and ending hundreds of thousands. And as the Government Accountability Office (GAO) leads an investigation into how DOGE accessed sensitive government databases, Trump’s federal agencies are reportedly refusing to hand over the necessary records. It’s clear we’re going to need some leadership from Congress, if not now than at the very least after the midterms. Stop the Money Pipeline, Communications Workers of America (CWA), and Tesla Takedown have come together to launch a campaign demanding accountability over DOGE’s mishandling of our Social Security data, Musk’s conflicts of interest and so much more. 🙋🏻♂️ They’re holding a mass call Thursday at 8PM ET to talk about how we can take part in their efforts. Let’s sign up to join them here. 🙋🏻♀️
GETTING ENGAGED WITH THE DEFLOCK CAMPAIGN
Automated license plate readers (ALPRs) like Flock are dystopian surveillance tools that police and ICE are using to spy on our movements and track our relationships. Dozens of cities across the U.S. have canceled or paused their contracts with Flock as communities rise up to fight back against the surveillance state. The DeFlock campaign wants to make sure that’s just the beginning. They’ve built a map where we can find license plate readers near us here and a directory of local groups doing the work to remove them in our neighborhoods here. Now, they’re organizing a national week of action August 16th-22nd to put the spotlight on our efforts against mass surveillance. 🙋🏻♀️ If we want to join the movement, we can get more information here and sign up to connect with others in our area here. 🙋🏻♂️
👀 KEEPING AN EYE ON… 👀
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Apply to train as a tenant union organizer by June 15th, info session TOMORROW
Get trained to help folks make their votes count with VoteRiders THURSDAY at 7PM ET
Looking for ways to get engaged in the midterms? Here’s a full list!
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Tell blue state Dems to fight fire with fire in countering gerrymandering
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De-ICE Citizens Bank coalition day of action at branches nationwide June 6th - find a protest near us or organize our own
Get Free, 50501 hold All of U.S. 250 mobilizations nationwide June 27th
Submit public comments to oppose barring trans folks from emergency shelters by June 29th
Good Trouble Lives On voting rights weekend of action July 17th-19th - register events here
This is the most thorough call to action post I've seen in a long time - and many are doable at home. What if you connected with organizations like Indivisible and creators who promote CTAs to their followers?
I wonder if there’s a way to understand the financials supporting the detainment centers. For example, who are their food vendors? Hospitality vendors? What other businesses are connected into GEO parent org? These are other ways to pressure action from the outside