Federal agents have agreed to withdraw from the parking lot of an immigration detention center in New Jersey, allowing state officials to oversee protests that had turned violent under the oversight of the Department of Homeland Security.
Sgt. First Class Charles Marchan of the New Jersey State Police said in an interview on Friday that his agency had negotiated with federal officials to leave the area outside the Delaney Hall detention center in Newark so that the state police could assume control.
The change could restore order outside the center, where federal officers on Friday charged into a crowd, pushed protesters to the ground and sprayed a chemical irritant. One officer beat a demonstrator with a baton across the torso, thighs, knee and calves as he tried to flee. Three protesters were arrested and carried past a razor-wire fence into the detention center.
Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, said in a statement on Friday that the decision to remove the federal officers represented a victory for his agency because Gov. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey had refused to allow state police to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
“This is a win for law and order,” Mr. Mullin said in a statement. “Thank you, governor.”
The agency has insisted that federal agents have used the minimum amount of force needed to protect themselves from protesters, whom the officials described as rioters engaged in obstructing law enforcement officers from doing their job.
Ms. Sherrill said that state police officials would designate a protest zone on Friday where demonstrators can gather outside Delaney Hall.
“I will not give ICE the pretext to expand operations in our state,” Ms. Sherrill said during a news conference. “Our top priority is public safety, and we need to take this opportunity to lower the temperature now.”
The protests began during the Memorial Day weekend, when crowds descended on the parking lot of the detention center, which sits inside a desolate industrial park fouled by the stench of raw sewage from the nearby Passaic River. Emotions have become inflamed at times, with activists taunting federal agents and one woman sobbing inside a tent.
Elected officials have appeared during the day, including Ms. Sherrill, Mayor Ras J. Baraka of Newark and several members of Congress from New Jersey and New York. On Monday, after the governor left, the protesters blocked an entrance and agents responded by firing pepper balls and spray at them. Senator Andy Kim, who said he was trying to de-escalate the situation, was among those affected.
Skirmishes continued during the week, and federal agents have episodically deployed chemical spray, mostly in the dark morning hours.
On Wednesday, a group of demonstrators was arrested, and on Thursday, relatives of detainees and advocates for immigrants said that migrants were being beaten and subjected to pepper spray in response to a hunger strike by some inmates. In an email sent Friday, officials with the Department of Homeland Security said that there had been a fight involving detainees at Delaney Hall and that jail staff had broken it up. The officials said that detainees who were affected were evaluated by medical workers and that no one was seriously hurt.
The Department of Homeland Security denied that there was a hunger strike at Delaney Hall on Tuesday and urged people who are being detained to self-deport. But later the same day, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey issued a statement insisting that for days, hundreds of detainees at the center had participated in a hunger strike to protest spoiled food and poor medical care. The organization said that migrants at other detention centers had engaged in similar acts of resistance.
Mark Bonamo contributed reporting.
Ana Ley is a Times reporter covering immigration in New York City.
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