Newark, New Jersey - Less than a month after its opening, a controversial immigration detention center run by a private firm has been the scene of protests 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 locking up migrants arrested by ICE and facing deportation, despite objections from area residents and local politicians.

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

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"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 behavior, decrying "a lack of planning and accountability."

Media reports and footage circulated late Thursday showed protesters trying to block an ICE van in front of Delaney Hall.

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

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

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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.

Baraka himself was arrested and briefly held last month after trying to join Democratic Representatives LaMonica McIver, Rob Menendez, and Bonnie Watson Coleman on an oversight tour of Delaney Hall.

In the aftermath of the incident, McIver has been charged with assaulting law enforcement officers, allegations she has dismissed as "purely political."