Pumped up by her landslide victory over Republican businessman Jack Ciattarelli in November, newly minted New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill has already ripped off the mask of moderation she presented to voters throughout her campaign. To no one’s surprise, Sherrill announced the launch of a portal to track and report ICE agents operating in her state. During a Wednesday interview with The Daily Show host Desi Lydic, Sherrill said, “We are going to be standing up a portal so people can upload all their cell phone videos and alert people. Like, if you see an ICE agent in the street, get your phone out.”
Sherrill also drew comparisons between ICE and the secret police agencies she observed during her Naval deployments. She told Lydic, “We saw people in the street with masks and no insignia. So not accountable at all, hiding from the population – and we saw again and again an undermining of what law enforcement should do to keep people safe.”
“We are putting out information helping New Jerseyans know their rights,” Sherrill noted. “We are not going to allow any ICE raids to be staged from state properties.”
In footage that did not appear in the TV interview but was later available on YouTube, Sherrill said, “They [federal agents] will pick people up, they will not tell us who they are … they’ll pick up American citizens.”
“They picked up a five-year-old child,” she claimed, repeating a now-debunked story that ICE agents had arrested a five-year-old in Minneapolis last week. The allegation went viral overnight on social media. By the following morning, however, the truth had emerged: the child’s father, fleeing from ICE agents, had abandoned his son on a city street in single-digit temperatures. When agents tried to return the child to his mother, those inside the home refused to open the door.
The New York Post reached out to Sherrill’s office for comment. Spokesperson Sean Higgins responded with the following statement:
Keeping New Jerseyans safe is Governor Sherrill’s top priority and, in the coming days, she and Acting Attorney General Davenport will announce additional actions to protect New Jerseyans from federal overreach. … We want documentation, and we are going to make sure we get it.
[The full interview can be viewed here.]
And with those words, the New Jersey governor joined the new confederacy, the growing number of Democrats working to obstruct the deportation of millions of illegal aliens who were allowed into the country during the Biden administration.
And just as the original Democrat-led Confederacy resisted federal authority in order to preserve slavery, today’s Democrats are not only resisting federal authority to shield illegal aliens from deportation, they are actively impeding the government’s efforts to enforce U.S. immigration laws.
They are trying to exempt themselves and their constituents from federal law, which is the very definition of a confederacy.
Democrats rail against the commotion caused by the surge of ICE agents into Minneapolis over the past month. In particular, they blame the deaths of agitators Renee Good and Alex Pretti on ICE agents.
But, it’s highly likely that both Good and Pretti would be alive today if state and local leaders had allowed federal agents into their jails to pick up criminal illegal aliens with detainers on them. Not only does trying to locate and detain an individual in the community require as many as 16 agents rather than the one needed to pick up a criminal from jail, it also increases the odds that someone is going to get hurt.
Contrary to the innocent, selfless images Democrats have tried to paint of Good and Pretti, the reality is far different. The truth is that both were members of highly coordinated and extremely motivated resistance groups dedicated to obstructing and impeding the work of ICE agents.
If Pretti had been arrested by Minneapolis police on January 13 for spitting on ICE agents and kicking out the tail light of their vehicle in a rage, he might have reconsidered the foolish actions that led to his death 11 days later.
He should have been arrested. He had certainly crossed the line from protest into unlawful behavior. Unfortunately, there were no city police officers on the scene to make an arrest. They’d been ordered not to assist federal agents.
The consequences of that political choice are no longer theoretical. By ordering state and local law enforcement to stand down, Democratic officials have replaced orderly enforcement with chaos in the streets, forcing federal agents into dangerous confrontations that need never have occurred.
This is not compassion, nor is it public safety. It is defiance masquerading as virtue. When governors and mayors instruct their police to obstruct federal law, they are not protecting communities; they are gambling with lives, including the lives of those they later rush to canonize. The bloodshed that follows is not an accident. It is the predictable outcome of a deliberate refusal to enforce the law.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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