Activists seeking the release of New Yorkers and New Jerseyans held on immigration violations at the Bergen County Jail clashed with police this weekend, leading to nine arrests and further escalating the controversy over Democratic-run counties’ detention contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The protests, ongoing for more than two weeks, are being held in solidarity with a handful of detainees who went on a hunger strike more than a month ago to demand release over fears of contracting COVID-19. A separate Abolish ICE march in support of the hunger strikers took place on a midtown Manhattan street on Friday, and ended when a woman drove her car into pedestrians, injuring six people. The driver, a Queens woman, was arrested.

On Saturday, outside the Bergen County Jail in Hackensack, NJ, video indicated sheriff’s officers were acting aggressively toward protesters, who apparently refused to move away from a barricaded area and get out of the street. Sheriff Anthony Cureton said Sunday that some of the 150 protesters assaulted officers, blocked traffic, and trespassed on jail property, which prompted the police response, including the use of “tactical smoke” grenades to obscure movement.

“Despite efforts to deescalate the situations, protesters continued their resistance, moving barricades -- throwing bricks, spitting, spraying officers with pepper spray, and even biting two officers,” Cureton said. He said those arrested, who were charged with offenses including aggravated assault, were “inciting civil unrest.”

On Sunday, a contingent of officers who outnumbered the protesters stood in formation in front of the jail. Many were in riot gear. Protesters chanted for the abolition of ICE. Some gave cops the finger.

One activist, Madeline Trimble, said that the more jail beds ICE has, the more immigrants the agency will arrest. “And by participating in this process, by having this contract, Bergen County and its entirely Democratic-led county government is enabling ICE to detain and deport more people,” she said. “It’s as simple as that and it’s time to end the contract right now.”

ICE has moved several of the hunger strikers to other facilities, and only two or three are still participating, according to those in contact with detainees. One detainee, Jaime Franco, called Gothamist/WNYC from Orange County Jail in New York, where he’s now housed. He ended his hunger strike Saturday after 22 days. He said he only drank water during that time, and lost 26 pounds. But it helped detainees’ morale to hear the protesters outside, he said.

“I really appreciate all of those guys who came out for us, and supported us,” said Franco, who has lived in the U.S. for 33 years.

Franco has spent nearly three years at the Bergen County Jail. He’s now willing to be deported, but his country, Venezuela, won’t take him back. So he’s in limbo. “Either deport me, or let me out on a [electronic monitoring] bracelet,” he said.

The sheriff did not take any questions Sunday about the hunger strike, his officers’ use of force, or the ICE detention contract that protesters want cancelled. The county gets $110 a day to jail immigrants for ICE. Essex and Hudson counties in New Jersey, which are also run by Democrats, likewise detain immigrants awaiting hearings on their civil immigration cases.

Cureton is the former inmate advocate at the jail and was the head of the county NAACP. A Democrat, he was elected sheriff after his predecessor was caught on tape making racist remarks. Cureton said he has participated in countless civil rights protests and Black Lives Matter rallies, but Saturday’s incident was different.

“What occurred yesterday was not a peaceful protest,” Cureton said. “It was not a productive act of political expression. What we saw yesterday was not, in the words of my hero John Lewis, ‘good trouble.’”

Cureton also said he personally opposed President Trump’s “divisive and wrong" immigration policies, and he hoped that President-elect Biden’s ICE would only “focus on those who have truly been a menace to our society.”

Citing numbers provided to him by ICE, Cureton said 92 percent of ICE detainees have been convicted of crimes, including murder, and transferred to the jail on immigration violations after finishing sentences in prison. This statement could not be verified, since ICE does not supply lists of those it arrests and detains.

But ICE regularly jails people who do not have criminal records or charges, and simply lack legal immigration documents. Ousman Darboe, for example, spent months at the Bergen County Jail after he was pardoned by Governor Andrew Cuomo for past criminal convictions.

Detainees who are on hunger strike have also made a litany of complaints about conditions at the jail, which Cureton denied. “Any notion that I would allow the violations of anyone’s civil rights, including denying medical treatment, poor sanitary conditions, forced starvation, or heat deprivation as claimed by many over social media, is unacceptable and contrary to my many years of being a civil rights activist,” he said.

Similar protests have occurred in recent weeks in Hudson County, where the all-Democratic freeholder board last month renewed a detention contract with ICE for another decade, despite its prior promise to end the contract.

Protests have been held outside the home of Hudson County’s leader, Democratic county executive Tom DeGise, who supports the contract. He then obtained a restraining order, forbidding protesters from gathering near his house for more than two hours each month. That has already resulted in arrests.

Cureton said his home was targeted, too, with ICE protesters painting “Free Them All” on his garage.

This is the most intense pushback against federal immigration policies as they’re enforced by local New Jersey officials since the 1990s, when the detention contracts began. The movement got a major boost this month when the top two Democrats in the state -- Senator Cory Booker and Senator Robert Menendez -- demanded that their Democratic allies in the three counties scrap their ICE contracts. Menendez called the revenue from ICE “blood money” -- a phrase that protesters repeated outside of the jail.

“The first step is raising visibility of this issue,” said Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster of T’ruah, a Jewish human rights group that led the first protest outside the jail last month. “Most of my friends and neighbors didn’t know about this issue before we began protesting, and now they can ask people they voted for why they allowed this to happen.”

Most of those held at the Bergen County Jail are New York residents. Cureton said eight of the nine people arrested Saturday were New Yorkers.

Matt Katz reports on air at WNYC about immigration, refugees, hate, and national security. You can follow him on Twitter at @mattkatz00.