Gov. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey on Saturday urged protesters to remain peaceful and to comply with local law enforcement after a confrontation between state police and demonstrators erupted outside an immigration detention center in New Jersey overnight.
Addressing reporters at a Saturday afternoon news conference at a New Jersey State Police station in Newark, about two miles from the immigration detention center, Delaney Hall, Ms. Sherrill said that demonstrators must “bring the temperature down” to avoid escalating immigration enforcement operations and endangering the lives of detainees and other immigrants in the state.
“We know what ICE has done in other states,” Ms. Sherrill said, standing beside the state’s attorney general and several law enforcement officials. “I refuse to let that happen in New Jersey. I will not give ICE a pretext to expand operations at Delaney Hall or across our state. I will not put lives at risk.”
The admonition on Saturday followed the scuffle between protesters and state police late Friday night outside Delaney Hall, which has for the past week been the site of tense protests over living conditions at the facility.
What began as an attempt by officers to disperse a crowd outside the center escalated into a standoff between 50 protesters and dozens of law enforcement officers. The State Police arrested six demonstrators, four of whom had traveled from New York and one from Pennsylvania.
The state police said that troopers from the agency had set up a designated protest area on Friday night that would provide a clear path for vehicles entering or leaving the facility through the main gate. Officers had instructed demonstrators to relocate there three times, but they were ignored, Lieutenant Colonel David Sierotowicz, the deputy superintendent of the agency, said.
While the officers were issuing orders, a crowd surrounded a law enforcement vehicle and made threats, prompting the agency to call in its public safety response team. Later, officers observed several people retrieving face coverings, fireworks, rocks and other projectiles from a nearby area and began making arrests, Lieutenant Colonel Sierotowicz said. Several protesters said the troopers had charged at them on both foot and horseback in an attempt to disperse the group.
Earlier that day, the state police said that federal agents, who have been policing the crowd outside Delaney Hall since the demonstrations began over Memorial Day weekend, had agreed to withdraw. Sgt. First Class Charles Marchan of the state police said that his agency had negotiated with federal officials to leave the area so that New Jersey troopers could assume control instead.
Officials had hoped that the move would restore a measure of order outside the detention center, but on Friday, that did not prove the case.
Ms. Sherrill said the troopers’ actions had been “absolutely necessary” to ensure that ICE agents did not swarm the area outside Delaney Hall. She criticized the intrusion of “extremist groups” and demonstrators from outside the state, who she said had been interfering in the protests and distracting from the ultimate goal of improving conditions inside the detention center, and eventually closing it.
“To the people coming from out of state to create chaos and dangerous situations, you should not be here,” Ms. Sherrill said. “You are not helping the people detained at Delaney Hall, you are not helping detainee families and you’re certainly not keeping New Jersey safe.”
The flare-up follows a week of tense encounters between protesters and federal agents outside the troubled detention center.
The groups have clashed frequently, with protesters sometimes taunting federal agents and the agents, in turn, tackling demonstrators, spraying chemical irritants and, in at least one case, beating a protester with a baton across the torso, thighs, knee and calves as he tried to flee.
On Wednesday, some members of a group of demonstrators were arrested, and on Thursday night, a 26-year-old man from Morris County bit two agents who were attempting to remove him during a scuffle outside the facility, the authorities said. The man, Brendan John Geier, was charged in New Jersey federal court on Friday with assaulting federal officers and causing bodily injury. He was later released with limitations and barred from returning to Delaney Hall.
A lawyer for Mr. Geier could not immediately be reached on Saturday.
Relatives of detainees and immigrant advocates have said that detainees inside the facility were beaten and doused with pepper spray this week after some inmates began a hunger strike.
The Department of Homeland Security has denied that there was a hunger strike. The agency also said that there had been a fight involving detainees inside the detention center and that jail staff had broken it up. Officials said that detainees who had been affected had been evaluated by medical workers and that no one had been seriously hurt.
On Saturday, the environment outside Delaney Hall remained tense, though calmer than the night before.
A scheduled rally for counterprotesters demonstrating in support of ICE attracted a few dozen people. The group stood on one side of metal barriers erected by police officers and was about one-third the size of the main protesting group.
Both sides pressed hard against the barriers, occasionally yelling insults.
Ms. Sherrill said her focus remained on gaining full access to Delaney Hall for the members of her administration, restoring visitation for families and ensuring that detainees received proper medical care.
“We can’t let what’s happening outside Delaney Hall take us away from that mission,” she said.
Maia Coleman is a reporter for The Times covering the New York Police Department and criminal justice in the New York area.
The post Gov. Sherrill Calls for Calm at Delaney Hall as Counterprotesters Arrive appeared first on New York Times.
