New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill held a press conference Saturday addressing the violent anti-ICE protests outside Delaney Hall in Newark, and her comments demonstrated exactly why blue-state leaders cannot be trusted to defend law enforcement when immigration enforcement becomes politically inconvenient.
The protests outside the ICE detention facility have spiraled into chaos.
The issue should have been simple. ICE agents are federal law enforcement officers carrying out federal immigration law. The governor’s first responsibility should be to ensure that officers can do their jobs safely and that violent protesters are detained, prosecuted, and removed from the area.
Instead, Sherrill opened her press conference by emphasizing the protesters.
“My focus is on protecting people’s right to protest peacefully and ensuring everyone’s safety,” Sherrill stated.
Rather than focus on ICE agents who have been blasted and threatened, Sherrill immediately shifted the discussion toward alleged actions by ICE in other states and maintained she would not allow ICE to use the protests as a “pretext” to expand operations in New Jersey.
“I will not give ICE a pretext to expand operations at Delaney Hall or across our state,” Sherrill said.
Violent agitators are the threat. People trying to block immigration enforcement are the threat. Protesters who surround law enforcement vehicles, threaten personnel and bring projectiles into the area are the threat.
ICE did not create the chaos outside Delaney Hall. ICE agents were doing their jobs. The protests were directed against them because the left has spent years demonizing immigration enforcement and portraying federal officers as villains for enforcing the law.
Even more revealing, state law enforcement later described exactly what officers were facing.
He stated individuals were seen retrieving face coverings, gas masks, fireworks, rocks and other projectiles from a nearby tent area. That is not a peaceful protest. That is organized escalation.
But even then, the governor framed the matter around protecting the anti-ICE cause from being distracted by violence.
Her message was that protesters should “bring the temperature down” so attention could return to detainees and Delaney Hall’s conditions.
Sherrill ran as a supposedly moderate Democrat, but Saturday’s press conference told a very different story.
When ICE agents were under pressure and anti-ICE activists were creating chaos in Newark, New Jersey’s governor did not make law enforcement the center of her message. She made the protesters the center of her message.
