1. United States
2. N.J.
3. Letter

I am one of your constituents, and I was at Delaney Hall. I am writing because you did not have to send the State Police into that fight — ICE was policing its own fence — and the moment you did, New Jersey became the crowd-control and logistics arm of a for-profit immigration prison you claim to oppose. I know your public position. You have called for Delaney Hall to be closed. You went there, and ICE denied you entry. You signed the Immigrant Trust Act. So you know exactly who is in that building — a private company, the GEO Group, paid roughly $1 billion to hold civil detainees, nearly three in four with no criminal record — and why people are outside it. Which makes your decision so hard to accept. Until last week, ICE was running its own perimeter with its own agents. You stepped in. The moment State Police took over, ICE withdrew behind the fence and let our troopers do its work: clearing the roads so ICE’s vehicles keep moving, and dispersing the people protesting the facility. The State Police you command, in riot gear and backed by mounted units, have fired tear gas and pepper spray on demonstrators the ACLU of New Jersey calls “overwhelmingly peaceful,” and forced a marked WNBC news crew out of their car and into the gas. And you have stood by it — blaming “national extremist groups” for the unrest, urging us to comply with lawful orders, and finding common ground with Donald Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary. There is no version of traffic management that requires riot gear, tear gas, and mounted charges. You were a federal prosecutor; you know the law better than most governors. You know Fields v. City of Philadelphia (3d Cir. 2017) protects the right to record police, and that gassing a marked news crew is not “reasonable.” You know that under E.D. v. Sharkey, 928 F.3d 299 (3d Cir. 2019) — applying Bell and Kingsley — the detainees are owed real Fourteenth Amendment protection. You know that tear gas and charging horses are exactly the kind of force that would deter a person of ordinary firmness from returning (Suppan v. Dadonna, 203 F.3d 228 (3d Cir. 2000)) — which is why I am afraid to go back. And you know — because the Supreme Court held it in Printz v. United States (1997) — that no one in Washington can compel New Jersey to help. You are helping by choice, against the very law you signed. Here is what I am asking, all of it within your power and none of it requiring Washington’s permission: • Withdraw the State Police from ICE’s perimeter. Let ICE police its own fence, as it did before you intervened. Direct NJSP, in writing, to provide no crowd-control, logistical, or other assistance to the facility’s operation. • Order an immediate end to tear gas, pepper spray, and mounted charges against peaceful protesters and journalists. • Use every tool you have — executive authority, the Attorney General, litigation, your public platform — to force access for press, counsel, and monitors, and to deliver the closure you have already demanded. You ran as someone who would stand against this. You cannot stand against ICE while your State Police protect its prison and gas the people protesting it. Right now your words and your troopers are on opposite sides. Pick the side you campaigned on. I am watching what you do, not what you say.