Journalists encounter chemical irritants, blocked access at New Jersey protests

Protests broke out in late May 2026 in Newark, New Jersey, outside the Delaney Hall immigration detention facility, when many detainees went on a hunger strike. Members of Congress, state and local lawmakers and rights groups have alleged dire conditions at the facility. The Department of Homeland Security has denied the allegations of detainee mistreatment.

Federal officers and then state and local police responded to the protests with chemical irritants, physical force and arrests.

Journalists on the ground described being exposed to chemical irritants fired by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and New Jersey State Police, being forced to pull back from the protest area and otherwise being impeded from documenting the protests.

Although these incidents do not constitute official press freedom violations under the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker’s criteria, we’ve provided a roundup of them below, organized by date (our reporting on the formal press freedom violations we cataloged in Newark in May is here).

This roundup will be updated as additional incidents are verified. To date, law enforcement agencies have not responded to multiple requests for comment.

To learn more about how the Tracker documents and categorizes violations of press freedom, visit our FAQ page.

May 26, 2026

• Ben Ackman, on assignment for the New Jersey Monitor, told the Tracker he was indirectly exposed to pepper spray used by ICE and was unable to work for about 30 minutes while flushing the irritant from his eyes. Also that day, he was shoved by an agent.
• Photojournalists Mostafa Bassim of Turkey’s Anadolu Agency and Olga Fedorova of the European Pressphoto Agency were standing together when federal officers targeted them with pepper spray, aiming at their camera lenses and then spraying into both journalists’ ears when they turned their heads. Bassim also told the Tracker that the officer targeted the spray at a vent in his gas mask.
• Photographer David “Dee” Delgado, who was on assignment for Reuters, told the Tracker he was hit by pepper spray after a federal officer indiscriminately sprayed the crowd during an ICE charge toward a line of protesters. “He was just spraying everybody; it didn’t matter who.” Earlier that day, Delgado was deliberately pepper-sprayed by an officer.
• Freelance journalist Amanda Moore told the Tracker she was sprayed by a chemical irritant during her evening coverage, causing measurable pain. Moore, who didn’t believe she had been targeted, said federal officers were spraying “super powerful crowd-control spray on individuals.” Later that day, a federal officer pointed a Taser at her while in pursuit of a protester.
• Freelance photojournalist Madison Swart told the Tracker she was in a gaggle of other news photographers — including Neil Constantine, Jonathan Fernandes, Fedorova and Delgado — when ICE officers targeted them with chemical irritants, deliberately spraying their lenses. Swart identified the irritant as a stronger, law-enforcement-grade pepper-spray product.
• Freelance photojournalist Christian Vazquez told the Tracker that while he was documenting the protest, ICE agents called out to him and other journalists by name, reading from their press credentials, in what he described as an “intimidation tactic.”

May 27, 2026

• Photojournalist Stephanie Keith told the Tracker that an ICE agent raised his baton at her as she was photographing him. “He lifted up the baton like he was going to bring it down like straight smack down on the top of my head.”
• Photojournalist Ryan Murphy, on assignment for Reuters, told the Tracker that he was caught up in pepper spray fired into the crowd by ICE officers. Also that day, he was hit with a police baton and deliberately sprayed with the chemical irritant.
• Photojournalist Cristina Panagi told the Tracker that pepper spray fired into the crowd by ICE seeped beneath her protective goggles and caused her forehead to burn. Also that day, she was pushed by an ICE officer.

May 28, 2026

• Photojournalist Stephanie Keith told the Tracker she was hit with an irritant that ICE deployed into the crowd. “It was like a garden hose worth of pepper spray on everybody.”
• Dean Moses, amNewYork’s police bureau chief and resident photographer, was struck by pepper spray fired by an ICE officer, the outlet reported. Moses told the Tracker that it was “very hard to know for sure” whether the officer targeted him as a member of the press. “It was so chaotic.”
• Photojournalist Ryan Murphy, on assignment for Reuters, told the Tracker that an ICE officer pointed a Taser directly at him. Also that day, he was hit in the hand with a baton, needing stitches.
• Christian Vazquez told the Tracker that while documenting the protest in the afternoon, an ICE agent pushed a protester into him, and he suffered a minor scrape. In the evening, he was exposed to chemical irritants that ICE agents fired “randomly.” He said the irritant got through a hole in his goggles and hit his left eye, and that he was treated by medics who flushed his eyes, as captured by photographer Graham MacIndoe. He described that experience in a video posted on Instagram.

May 29, 2026

• New Jersey State Police ordered a three-member WNBC television news crew — reporter Checkey Beckford and two photojournalists wearing press credentials — out of their marked news vehicle and into a cloud of tear gas, Beckford reported. The police pulled one of the photojournalists out of the car.
• Stephen Yang, on assignment for the New York Post, said that he was affected by tear gas deployed by law enforcement while documenting the protest. “The tear gas certainly was very effective at stopping me from doing my job intermittently throughout that night.”

May 30, 2026

• Christian Vazquez told the Tracker that he was reporting as New Jersey State Police in riot gear responded to the protest in the late evening, and the situation “went from zero to 100 real quick.” The police fired chemical irritants to disperse protesters, and even though he was standing back and wearing goggles and a KN95 mask, the gas got into his airway and he started coughing. He said he was forced to flee the scene. “They didn’t care who they were aiming at,” he said. “They didn’t give any warning to disperse. It just happened.”

May 31, 2026

• Stephen Yang, on assignment for the New York Post, told the Tracker that law enforcement blocked him and other members of the press from freely covering the protest for about 20 minutes. “They held us at a distance to where we could not see what was going on,” he said. “They’ll say it’s for safety, but really what they’re doing is they’re restricting press access.”