Just when it looked like Newark was finally getting serious about restoring order around the Delaney Hall detention facility, city officials appear ready to ease off the gas.
🚨 HOMAN TO NEWARK MAYOR: DO YOUR JOB OR PRESIDENT TRUMP WILL DEPLOY THE NATIONAL GUARD 🚨@RealTomHoman : “You got to do your public safety job.”
“If you don’t, President Trump has no problem deploying the National Guard.” pic.twitter.com/zEpBpw8VMF
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) June 5, 2026
According to federal officials, Newark is scaling back its police presence around the facility because unrest has diminished. That’s a curious lesson to draw from weeks of chaos. What message does that send to the activists, agitators and anti-ICE diehards who turned the area into a circus?
The federal account of what was happening on the ground is even more alarming. “When I got up there, they weren’t responding to 911 calls. ICE officers being assaulted in the streets. They called. They’re overwhelmed. Police didn’t respond. State troopers didn’t respond,” White House Border Czar Tom Homan told Laura Ingraham on Wednesday. “I got up there. First thing I did, I met with the state police. I met with the mayor of that city. I met with the police department. I’ve had several conversations with the governor. I did the same thing I did in Minneapolis. You got to do your public safety job.”
And the warning that followed wasn’t subtle.
“And if you don’t, President Trump has no problem deploying the National Guard up here. But you got to do your job.”
Federal officials say they have no intention of backing down. In fact, they’ve done the opposite. “We’ll protect the facility. That’s our job,” Homan said.
And protect it they have.
“We armored up that facility. We put more wire in. We put embassy fencing. We put Jersey barriers. We put more lighting and more drones, more cameras, so we can take facial recognition, too,” Homan said. “So while they’re out there being the jerks they are, we’re gathering all this intelligence and furthering the investigation. That’s going to hold a lot of people accountable.”
That’s the part many activists never seem to grasp. The protest ends. The investigation doesn’t.
Homan also expressed frustration with Newark’s apparent retreat. “I wish the mayor wouldn’t back up. We worked very hard to get this agreement. If she backs off, then President Trump will step in.”
Again, the message couldn’t be clearer. Federal immigration enforcement isn’t going away because local politicians get cold feet. “President Trump’s not going to take this garbage. I mean, he’s going to make sure that ICE enforces laws. We have the right to detain people,” he said.
“Everybody in that facility is being legally detained.” More than that, “a large portion of them are mandatorily detained by federal statute. We couldn’t release them if we wanted to. These people, the government needs to study the immigration law and find out we’re doing exactly what Congress intended us to do.”
The divide is growing between politicians who treat immigration enforcement as an embarrassment and officials who view it as a legal obligation.
One side wants fewer police, less enforcement and lower visibility.
The other side is installing barriers, deploying drones, collecting evidence and preparing for the next round. If the unrest really is over, everyone should welcome that.
If city leaders think the answer is to stand down while federal officers remain targets, they may discover that Washington has very little patience left for that experiment.
