Violent civil disruptions have intensified over the last two weeks, culminating in a violent melee over Memorial Day weekend in which mounted police were deployed to disperse rioters.
In remarks to reporters, New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill recently related “heartbreaking reports of unsafe, inhumane and unconstitutional conditions” that prevail inside the Newark-based migrant detention facility Delaney Hall. She cannot say for herself whether those reports are true, of course. She maintains that she has been conspicuously barred from accessing the facility, raising “serious questions about what is happening behind its walls.”
In covering her remarks, though, the New York Times offers an innocuous explanation for Sherrill’s inability to survey the landscape for herself. In the process, the paper exposed the degree to which the governor’s fellow Democrats, who also insist that they have been denied access to the facility, are misleading the public.
State-level officials, the Times reported, must obtain permission from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to access federal property. Sherrill has made those requests, and the governor’s office has filed a lawsuit to allow state medical units to inspect the facility. But the hurdles Sherrill must clear are reserved for state-level officials.
“By law,” the Times admitted, “members of Congress are authorized to conduct oversight visits at Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency facilities at will. And tours of Delaney Hall by members of Congress are common.”
That puts the lie to the notion bandied about by Democratic members of Congress, who have insisted that they, too, have been barred from the facility. Their allegations, which have inspired breathless condemnations of the Department of Homeland Security, rest on the degree to which DHS occasionally restricts access to the site during periods in which the band of agitators encamped outside the facility engages in violence. Democrats themselves have been caught up in crowd control activities, even as they maintain that DHS has no logical rationale for shuttering the facility.
The Times also confirmed the extent of the violent civil disruptions that have intensified over the last two weeks, culminating in a violent melee over Memorial Day weekend in which mounted police were deployed to disperse rioters. Some police were beaten and bitten before the mob retreated into Newark’s streets, setting trash piles alight.
Yet, in the Times reporting, that violence was an outlier. The “mainly peaceful protesters” who accreted around the facility in response to Democratic exhortations to do just that created a “festive” atmosphere. “Some demonstrators bopped their heads to dance music, salsa, punk rock, rap and reggae,” the report read. When they weren’t assaulting cops, at least.