New Jersey Taxpayers Paid $370,000 to an Anti-ICE Group Now Fomenting Chaos Outside a Federal Detention Facility

A Princeton-based group that wants to abolish ICE and defund the police has been a leading organizer of nearly two weeks of unrest outside Delaney Hall, the federal immigration detention facility in Newark, New Jersey. According to records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, that same group has been kept afloat in large part by New Jersey taxpayers — collecting roughly $370,000 in grants funneled through a state-funded nonprofit since 2022.

The group, Resistencia En Acción New Jersey (REA NJ), describes its mission as defending migrants “criminalized by local police, ICE, exploitative employers, racial profiling and the detention and deportation system.” The $370,000it has received from the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium — a grantmaker funded overwhelmingly by the state — amounts to roughly 40 percent of REA NJ’s total revenue over that span, the Free Beacon found.

The protests REA NJ helped lead have, at times, turned violent — with demonstrators sporting homemade shields, erecting barricades, and clashing with federal and state law enforcement, producing nearly 80 arrests. The story is, at bottom, a question of stewardship: New Jersey’s Democratic-led government built the funding pipeline, and a slice of that public money landed in the hands of an organization now coordinating disorder at a federal facility on New Jersey soil.

• $370,000 — in grants routed to anti-ICE group REA NJ since 2022 through the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium — roughly 40% of the group's total revenue · Source: Washington Free Beacon review of records
• $2,500,000 — in state money the Legislature and Gov. Phil Murphy (D) dedicated to the Civic Information Consortium in the 2026 budget; the consortium draws roughly three-quarters of its funding from the state · Source: Free Press / NJCIC
• ~80 arrests — during nearly two weeks of protests outside Delaney Hall in Newark, with demonstrators using shields, barricades, and clashing with law enforcement · Source: Washington Free Beacon / PBS NewsHour

The New Jersey Civic Information Consortium is not, on its face, an activist outfit. It was created by state law in 2018 and pitched as a way to shore up local journalism in news deserts across the Garden State. But the money it gives out is, by design, mostly public money: roughly three-quarters of the consortium’s funding comes from the state of New Jersey, and in some years — 2022 among them — the state share has run as high as 94 percent, according to the Free Beacon’s review.

Since 2022, that consortium has sent some $370,000to Resistencia En Acción New Jersey, much of it earmarked for REA NJ’s Radio Jornalera NJ project — a Spanish-language network billed as giving “a voice to immigrant workers.” The grants are framed as journalism funding. But the same network has been on the ground at Delaney Hall, and its coverage there has been anything but neutral — REA NJ has openly helped organize the demonstrations its outlet documents.

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REA NJ is explicit about its politics. The group has long advocated for abolishing ICE and defunding the police, and it operates an ICE-reporting hotline for Mercer County. It says it has “helped families stop nearly 90 deportations” since 2016. Its director, Ana Paola Pazmiño, has been a visible presence at Delaney Hall — appearing outside the facility after one weekend riot, in goggles and a face mask, to declare in Spanish that the group would be “going back every day.”

The taxpayer money is not the only outside support. The Free Beacon found REA NJ has also drawn more than $205,000since 2021 from the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, and it sits within an ecosystem of immigration-activist groups financed by the Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundations, the Tides Network, and Rockefeller. What distinguishes the state grants is whose money it is: the public’s.

“They are using our resources, using all the taxes we pay — to suppress us.”

REA NJ director Ana Paola Pazmiño, outside Delaney Hall · as quoted by the Washington Free Beacon

The protests began on May 22, 2026, after immigration advocates alleged that detainees inside Delaney Hall had launched a hunger strike over poor food and conditions. They quickly escalated. Over nearly two weeks, demonstrators linked arms to block vehicles and personnel, used trash cans and makeshift items as shields and barricades, surged police barriers, and clashed with federal agents and counter-demonstrators. Pepper spray was deployed; nearly 80 people were arrested.

The disorder grew severe enough that Newark Mayor Ras Baraka (D) imposed a 9 p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew within a half-mile of the facility, saying the protests had “started to spiral” into violence. New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D) sent in the state police to take over the perimeter from ICE agents, telling reporters the situation had “grown unsafe, and that’s completely unacceptable.” Fox News later reported that secret Signal chats showed agitators coordinating the Newark unrest in advance.

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The funding apparatus is a creature of New Jersey’s Democratic government. The Civic Information Consortium was established under former Gov. Phil Murphy (D), and it was Murphy and the Democratic-controlled Legislature who dedicated $2,500,000to it in the 2026 state budget signed July 1, 2025. The consortium then decides which grantees receive the public’s money — and REA NJ has been among the larger recipients.

The consortium has said it “does not monitor or track the protest organizing activities of its grantees or affiliated organizations.” That is precisely the accountability gap: a grantmaker handing out tax dollars on a journalism rationale, disclaiming any responsibility for what its grantees do with the platform and the resources once the check clears. When the grantee is helping coordinate disorder at a federal facility, the disclaimer does not make the taxpayer’s dollar any cleaner.

“The consortium does not monitor or track the protest organizing activities of its grantees or affiliated organizations.”

New Jersey Civic Information Consortium · as quoted by the Washington Free Beacon

The Department of Homeland Security has flatly rejected the “inhumane conditions” narrative that fueled the protests, publishing statements accusing New Jersey’s sanctuary politicians of spreading “smears” about Delaney Hall. Border czar Tom Homan (Trump-appointed) accused Democrats of “lying” about conditions after a surprise visit, and a subsequent facility inspection, Fox News reported, contradicted claims made in the New Jersey attorney general’s lawsuit seeking access to the building.

None of that resolves the food-and-medical-care allegations one way or the other — those remain contested in litigation. But it sharpens the central fact of this story, which is not about who is right on detention conditions. It is that a portion of the unrest outside a federal facility was organized by a group sustained, in significant part, by New Jersey taxpayers — a use of public money the state’s own grantmaker says it never tracked.

Strip away the heat of the protests and a simpler problem remains. New Jersey set up a fund to support local news. It filled that fund mostly with tax dollars. The fund handed roughly $370,000to an organization that openly campaigns to abolish a federal agency — and that organization is now a lead organizer of disorder at that agency’s facility. The state’s answer, so far, is that nobody was watching what the grantee did with the money.

That is the recurring pattern this site documents: public money flowing through a sympathetic-sounding intermediary into political activism, with the chain of responsibility diffused enough that no one official has to own it. The grants are on the record. The protests are on the record. The arrests are on the record. What is missing is anyone in New Jersey’s government willing to say the two are connected — even though their own records say they are.

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Last updated June 8, 2026