Immigration rights advocates are gathering in Newark Thursday in a demonstration against the school district’s ties to a food vendor they say “profits off of ICE activity in NJ.”
Driscoll Foods, a family-owned business with a contract with the Newark Board of Education, also supplies food at Newark’s Delaney Hall Detention Center, activists say. Delaney Hall is the state’s largest detention facility.
Activists with immigration and human rights groups — including Eyes On ICE, the Democratic Socialists of America and the progressive grassroots movement Indivisible — are taking part in the demonstration, part of the “Ditch Driscoll Foods” social media campaign.
“Our concern is about the board of education understanding that their money is going towards supporting a company that is profiting from immigrant detention that is hurting families of students at Newark public schools,” Mary Rizzo, an associate professor at Rutgers University-Newark who plans to attend the rally, told NJ Advance Media.
Nearly 60% of Newark’s 40,000 public school students are Hispanic, many from immigrant families, said Rizzo, citing school district data.
Activists are planning to show up at Thursday’s board of education meeting at McKinley Elementary School to urge school district officials to drop the company as a vendor, find a new food supplier, and “make them aware of how Driscoll Foods contracts at Delaney Hall, directly collaborating with ICE.”
Organizers said they will host a rally outside the meeting before delivering public comments in an action designed to “educate the board members as to where they put taxpayer money in the future,” according to Rizzo.
Driscoll Foods, which describes itself as “one of the largest independent foodservice distributors in the Northeast,” has a 500,000-square-foot facility in Wayne, N.J. and distribution centers in Amsterdam, N.Y. and Stroudsburg, P.A.
A company representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday morning.
