Ask Governor Sherrill: June Recap

**Brian Lehrer** (0:10)
Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Well, last night, Governor Mikie Sherrill sat down for the second installment of her Ask Governor Sherrill interview series with WNYC's Michael Hill. By far the biggest topic on the mind of New Jersey callers was the violent clashes between state police and protesters outside the Delaney Hall Immigration Detention Center over the weekend. The governor put in another formal request yesterday morning to visit inside the detention center, and she wants to send health inspectors in to see what's going on. The treatment of the detainees with respect to their health is one of the main complaints that people have. She also addressed concerns about data centers in New Jersey and the fear of some residents that they will drive up energy costs and harm the environment. Then there are Tuesday's primary results from two major congressional races in New Jersey 7th and 12th districts. Those came up as well.
So joining us now with excerpts from and to take any of your reactions to last night's Ask Governor Sherrill.
And about primary date are Michael Sol Warren, New Jersey reporter for WNYC and Gothamist and Mike Hayes, WNYC and Gothamist New Jersey politics reporter and author of the book The Secret Files, Bill de Blasio, the NYPD and the broken promises of police reform. Mike and Michael, welcome back to the show.

**Mike Hayes** (1:32)
Hey Brian, thanks for having us.

**Michael Sol Warren** (1:34)
Thanks for having us Brian.

**Brian Lehrer** (1:35)
And let's start with some of Governor Sherrill's remarks last night about the protests and ICE and state police activity at Delaney Hall. Her deployment of state police has been one of the controversies. And you wrote Michael that throughout the show, Sherrill repeated the reasoning she's given over the last several days for sending state police to the scene to prevent an escalation from ICE after a week of violent clashes between federal agents and demonstrators. So, let's take a listen to about 45 seconds of Governor Sherrill on that last night.

**Mikie Sherrill** (2:10)
We'd already seen one person with ICE outside get pushed into a semi-truck and get injured. We saw ICE troops beating people with batons even on the ground. And we knew what was coming next. We've seen it in Minneapolis. And I refuse to let that happen, you know, parents bringing their kids home and getting killed by ICE, mass immigration roundups. And it didn't. We worked incredibly hard to focus on public safety and constitutional rights and to get back the focus on the reason the protesters were there in the first place.
What is going on in Delaney Hall? And so, yes, I have been asked by the people within Delaney Hall to come speak to them. I put in a formal request. I went to the gate myself.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:58)
So, Michael, there she is saying she wants to protect New Jerseyans from ICE, but at the same time, her deployment of state police as part of that has been controversial. What did you take away from last night?

**Michael Sol Warren** (3:11)
Yeah, Brian, thanks. She was really trying to walk a fine line here. I mean, she's gotten a lot of flak over how the state police have handled or did handle themselves over the weekend. The governor was trying to explain that she felt it was necessary for the state police to take over crowd control responsibilities at protest in front of Delaney Hall last Friday, almost a week ago, because in the days prior, there had been some serious violent incidents between ICE agents and protestors and to back up a second, for basically a year since Delaney Hall reopened and became used as an ICE detention center, people have been protesting very peacefully outside, and detainees and their families and advocates have been raising concerns about conditions inside. That kind of ramped up throughout May, especially when detainees were released a public letter detailing how conditions had deteriorated inside and launched a hunger and labor strike.
As part of that, there appeared to be retaliatory measures taken against the detainees, though DHS has denied this, and protestors outside were concerned that detainees were being transferred out and away from their families as punishment. So there was a point in time right before the Memorial Day holiday when protestors began trying to block transfer vans from leaving the facility. And this action set up confrontations with ICE agents that became increasingly violent over a period of days. And so it was that scene, that escalation that Governor Sherrill was trying to deal with to cool down by, she hoped, having state police replace ICE agents in front of Delaney Hall.

**Brian Lehrer** (5:17)
David, come up. What happened was?