NEW YORK, June 14, 2025 (AFP) - Less than a month after it began receiving migrants, a controversial detention center run by a private firm has been the scene of protests, violence, and escapes, sources said Friday.

Soon after Donald Trump's inauguration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) inked a billion-dollar, 15-year contract to outsourcing giant Geo Group to transform an industrial estate near the international airport in Newark, New Jersey into a 1,000-bed detention center.

In May, the center - Delaney Hall - began receiving migrants arrested by ICE and facing deportation, despite objections from area residents and local politicians.

Late Thursday, detainees at the center began a protest against detention conditions, according to Mustafa Cetin, a lawyer for an asylum seeker being held there.

"I have talked to my client yesterday and he told me that roughly 50 detainees were protesting against their conditions," Cetin told AFP.

"They were getting aggressive and it turned violent."

Cetin slammed the Geo Group and ICE for their performance, decrying "a lack of planning and accountability."

US media reports and footage circulated late Thursday showed protesters trying to block an ICE van in front of Delaney Hall and clashing with police.

A senior official with the US Department of Homeland Security meanwhile confirmed to AFP on Friday that four detainees "had escaped" from the center the night before.

"Additional law enforcement partners have been brought in to find these escapees," the official said.

Newark's mayor, Democrat Ras Baraka, said Friday that he was concerned about reports of events at Delaney Hall, "ranging from withholding food and poor treatment, to uprising and escaped detainees."

"This is why city officials and our congressional delegation need to be allowed entry to observe and monitor, and why private prisons pose a very real problem to our state and its constitution," he said in a statement.

The detention center has become one of the latest flashpoints in Democrats' fight against Trump's crackdown on what he calls an "invasion" of undocumented migrants.

Baraka himself was arrested and briefly held last month after he tried to enter the detention center, closely guarded by ICE agents and security personnel.

Following the dispute that broke out between elected officials and federal agents, Democratic congresswoman LaMonica McIver was also charged with assaulting law enforcement officers, something she has dismissed as "purely political."