Immigrant who helped set off Delaney Hall hunger strike released from ICE custody
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ELIZABETH, New Jersey (RNS) — Martín Alonso Soto Hernandez, a Peruvian asylum seeker who was held in solitary confinement at Elizabeth Contract Detention Facility after helping organize a hunger and labor strike at Delaney Hall, was released from ICE custody around 8 p.m. Tuesday evening (Oct. 6).
Soto, wearing an ankle monitor, was reunited with his wife, Gabriela Soto — who has become a vocal immigrant rights advocate — and his two young children.
“I don’t have words,” he said in Spanish, holding his wife and children and addressing roughly two-dozen people gathered in support outside the center. “Thank you so much for everything. I always, always stayed in prayer.”
His wife — wearing a black, long-sleeved shirt that read “I am an immigrant do you want to deport me too?” — also spoke, saying in Spanish, “God gave me the strength to continue fighting for my husband, for justice for everybody and he gave me the strength for our family to be reunited.”
The Sotos, who live in Kearny, New Jersey, married in 2024 and attended a church in Newark before Martín Soto’s arrest in early 2026,…
