The riots outside Newark’s Delaney Hall ICE detention center have been getting uglier by the night.
One man decided to get right up in an unmasked federal agent’s face and make a threat so vile it went viral within hours.
He probably should have thought twice before doing it on camera.
What the Video Showed
A left-wing activist in Newark was caught on camera shouting at an unmasked ICE officer, “I’ll kill your whole f–king family. Your whole f–king family is dead. Your children, your wife, all dead.”
On one of the nights of unrest, a leftist rioter was filmed outside the Delaney Hall ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey, threatening to kill an ICE agent and his family. The clip spread fast.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche saw it. And he made a promise.
Blanche told Fox News, “I promise you, we will find him. And when we find him, we will arrest him, because it is a crime not only to threaten law enforcement, but, not surprisingly, to threaten their families as well.” The acting attorney general was referring to 18 U.S. Code Section 115, which imposes a fine or imprisonment for threatening death against federal officers and their families.
He Kept That Promise
The rioter who made the alleged threats has been identified as 27-year-old Nicholas Scelfo from Brooklyn, New York. The FBI raided his home and arrested him.
Fox News national correspondent Alexis McAdams reported, “DOJ sources tell me the FBI has arrested Nicholas Scelfo, the man police say was caught on camera threatening to kill an ICE agent and the agent’s family outside Newark’s Delaney Hall detention facility this week. Sources say Scelfo is facing federal felony charges.”
Blanche’s announcement on X was short. Just two words after “Told you.”
Blanche wrote on X, “Told you. @FBI just arrested the man who threatened to kill ICE officers and their families. FAFO.”
FBI Director Kash Patel reposted Blanche’s announcement. No long statement. No press conference. Just a repost. That said everything.
This Wasn’t a One-Night Protest
The clash occurred outside Newark’s Delaney Hall detention center, where protesters were accused of biting, kicking and punching agents. The protests were in their sixth night by that point.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin stated, “On the evening of May 28th, approximately 100 anti-ICE rioters gathered around the Delaney Hall ICE facility. Rioters bit, kicked, and punched law enforcement officers. Governor Sherrill refused to allow state police to assist our officers.”
Read that again. The governor of New Jersey refused to send state police to back up federal agents getting bitten and punched.
Approximately 100 protesters mobbed the area surrounding the detention center, chanting “F— ICE” and brandishing black umbrellas, gas masks and other gear to protect themselves from pepper spray and various anti-riot measures.
Nine rioters were arrested during the clashes in one night alone, the Department of Homeland Security told Fox News Digital.
Scelfo wasn’t the only one facing charges. Blanche also shared an update on a second suspect in another violent incident: “Today @TheJusticeDept charged rioter Brendan John Geier for allegedly kicking and biting ICE officers at Delaney Hall.”
Who Is Nicholas Scelfo?
According to journalist Andy Ngo, Nicholas Matthew Scelfo, 27, from Brooklyn, New York, was a participant in the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests and, more recently, the “No Kings” protests.
So this wasn’t a first-time activist who got swept up in something. Scelfo allegedly showed up at Delaney Hall as part of a pattern of left-wing street agitation stretching back years. The 2020 BLM movement burned through American cities and left a trail of violence and destruction in its wake. Its organizers openly declared Marxist ideology. And some of the people it radicalized are still showing up, still escalating.
That context matters. The people screaming death threats at ICE agents in Newark didn’t materialize out of nowhere.
What Mullin Said About the Bigger Picture
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin stated, “Thank you to the @FBI for arresting a rioter who threatened to kill an @ICEgov law enforcement officer and his family outside Delaney Hall. Our officers are facing an 8,000% increase in death threats against them as they put their lives on the line to arrest the worst of the worst.”
An 8,000% increase. That number should stop people cold. These are men and women doing a job the law requires them to do, enforcing immigration statutes passed by Congress, and the left has turned them into targets.
And where was New Jersey’s Democrat Governor Mikie Sherrill during all of this? Democrat Governor Mikie Sherrill, a proponent of illegal alien “sanctuary” policies, put the blame on ICE and President Trump rather than the demonstrators who were fueling the unrest with their attempts at blockades and their purposeful goading of the agents.
She blamed the federal officers. That’s the Democrat Party’s position on law enforcement in 2026: side with the mob, leave the agents on their own, and call it leadership.
What Comes Next for Scelfo
It is a federal crime to threaten to murder a federal officer or his immediate family members.
DOJ sources confirmed that Scelfo is allegedly facing federal felony charges stemming from the threats he allegedly made against the ICE agent and the agent’s family outside the Delaney Hall detention facility. The specific charges had not been fully detailed publicly at the time of reporting, but federal charges for threatening a federal law enforcement officer carry serious prison time under United States law.
But the charges against Scelfo are only one piece of this. The larger story is what the federal government’s response signals going forward. Acting Attorney General Blanche made a public promise and kept it within 24 hours. FBI Director Patel amplified the announcement. DHS Secretary Mullin backed it up. That’s a coordinated message to anyone else standing outside a federal facility thinking about making threats on camera.
The people who spent the last several years screaming that ICE should be abolished now have their answer. ICE isn’t going anywhere. And the men and women who enforce immigration law aren’t going to be threatened without consequences.
The only question left is whether the Democrat politicians in New Jersey who enabled this circus will face any accountability of their own. Don’t hold your breath. But the rioters who showed up with gas masks and wooden pallets to besiege a federal detention facility are finding out, one arrest at a time, that the federal government under President Trump has no interest in looking the other way.
Nicholas Scelfo allegedly got right in a federal agent’s face and threatened to kill his children and his wife. The FBI had him in handcuffs before the week was out.
Turns out FAFO isn’t just an internet phrase anymore.
Sources: Fox News, Townhall, American Wire News, RedState, WLT Report, PJ Media, The Union Star, Andy Ngo/X, Nick Sortor/X, Acting AG Todd Blanche/X, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin/X