Advocates urge Newark school board to drop ICE-linked vendor
Immigration rights advocates are gathering in Newark on Thursday for a protest over the school district’s ties to a food vendor who they say is “profiting off ICE activity in New Jersey.”
Driscoll Foods, a family-owned business with a contract with the Newark School Board, also supplies food to Newark’s Delaney Hall Detention Center, activists say. Delaney Hall is the largest detention center in the state.
Activists from immigration and human rights groups – including Eyes On ICE, the Democratic Socialists of America and the progressive grassroots movement Indivisible – are participating in the protest, as part of the “Ditch Driscoll Foods” social media campaign.
“Our concern is that the Board of Education understands that its money is being used to support a company that profits from immigration detention that harms the families of Newark public school students,” Mary Rizzo, an associate professor at Rutgers University in Newark who plans to attend the rally, told NJ Advance Media.
Nearly 60 percent of Newark public schools’ 40,000 students are Hispanic, many from immigrant families, Rizzo said, citing school district data.
Activists plan to appear at the McKinley Elementary School board meeting Thursday to urge school district officials to drop the company as a supplier, find a new food supplier and “make them aware of how Driscoll Foods contracts at Delaney Hall, working directly with ICE.”
Organizers said they would hold a rally outside the meeting before making public comments in an action designed to “educate board members on where they will put taxpayer dollars 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, New Jersey, and distribution centers in Amsterdam, New York and Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.
A company representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday morning.
