Dozens of Hudson County residents and elected officials rallied in Jersey City this week to demand that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey install public, 24/7 webcams monitoring ICE-related flights at Newark Liberty International Airport. The gathering, held at 2 Montgomery Street, centered on concerns about detainee safety during transfers at Delaney Hall, the immigration detention facility in Newark.
The rally was organized by Hoboken Resist, a group that previously ran the “De-ICE Citizens Bank” initiative in Hoboken, according to Hudson County View. Organizers say ICE detainees have allegedly experienced abysmal treatment at Delaney Hall, and activists carried signs reading “EYES on EWK” and “No Secret Flights Out of Newark” while chanting in opposition to ICE operations, per the same report.
500 Petitions Head to the Port Authority
Ron Bautista, the Hudson County Commissioner Democratic nominee for District 5, said organizers brought 500 petitions to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey as part of the push. Bautista told the outlet that ICE does not follow the rules and argued that a public live stream of detainee transport operations would provide more transparency and checks and balances.
Bautista also said a public travel log for ICE detainees is important, arguing it would help lawyers locate clients in detention and give families and advocates access to detainee travel information. He said the current process puts detainees at risk when they are boarded onto planes.
The Petition's Specific Demands
The rally's petition, posted on Change.org, asks the Port Authority to establish an official public flight log alongside a 24/7 live-streaming camera feed of ICE charter and transfer flights at Newark. It calls for a transparent, publicly accessible online log detailing the arrival, departure and tail numbers of all non-commercial enforcement flights, and it also seeks oversight of airport conditions by officials managing the tarmac, with tarmac managers enforcing existing airport safety rules.
Sylvia Schwartz, an organizer with Hoboken Resist, said the rally focused on detainee safety amid a practice organizers call hot fueling — shackled detainees being transferred on the tarmac while a plane is actively being fueled. Schwartz said hot fueling saves time but violates safety regulations, and she urged Hudson County residents to sign the petition for better oversight of ICE operations at Newark Airport.
Pointing to Seattle as a Model
Organizers repeatedly cited Seattle's King County International Airport as precedent for what they want to see at Newark. King County created a full-time Flight Monitoring and Outreach Coordinator to observe and log ICE deportation and relocation charter flights on county property, according to FOX 13 Seattle. The county's program combines physical monitoring, four livestream airfield cameras and public passenger logs, streaming those camera feeds and publishing weekly passenger logs directly on its public website.
That system recorded 285 detainees moving through the airfield across five flights during the first weeks of August, per FOX 13's reporting. The cameras themselves went up on King County's tarmac in 2023, according to the Chicago Tribune, and the Newark petition specifically alleges that Seattle's webcams revealed aircraft being refueled while shackled detainees were actively boarding — the same hot-fueling concern Schwartz raised about Newark.
An observation room at Seattle's Boeing Field, built around a closed-circuit camera, offers what ProPublica has called America's best real-time window into ICE deportation flights.
A Broader Surge in Deportation Flights
The Newark rally comes against a backdrop of rapidly increasing deportation flight activity nationwide. Aviation data tracker Tom Cartwright counted 5,962 deportation-related flights from the start of President Donald Trump's second term through July 2025, a 41% jump over the 1,721 flights logged in the same period the year before, the Chicago Tribune reported. That same reporting found airlines increasingly using dummy call signs and blocking aircraft tail numbers from public tracking websites, making it harder for outside observers to follow where deportation flights are headed.
Joe Quintero, a Hoboken councilman-at-large and Democratic chair in Hoboken, framed the Jersey City rally as part of a wider, countywide pushback against ICE operations at Newark Airport. Local activists and community leaders joined Bautista and Schwartz at the event, where organizers pressed for greater public scrutiny of what happens on Newark's tarmac.
It remains unclear whether the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey or ICE will respond to the petition's demands, and no webcams have been confirmed as installed or authorized at Newark Liberty International Airport. Organizers say they intend to keep pressing the case using the King County program as their template.
