Author: Aliya Schneider

Josue Barreiro stood in front of a crowd of 200 people seated inside a church last week in Haddonfield. He was there to speak about his experience as one of 61 protesters arrested in one night outside Delaney Hall after Gov. Mikie Sherrill had sent over state police.

He told the crowd, gathered for a meeting of the South Jersey progressive group Cooper River Indivisible, that the governor made it seem like she was sending state troopers to protect demonstrators from federal immigration officers. Instead, he said, they brutalized protesters on horseback in riot gear. He showed a video of state police knocking him to the ground.

“All accounts say the state police were considerably more violent than the federal government was,” Barreiro, a Bridgeton resident and activist with Los Tequios, told receptive audience members who made sounds of disgust.

Sherrill, a former member of Congress whose double-digit victory last year was seen as a rebuke of President Donald Trump, has been in her most high-profile political bind yet as she juggles her opposition to the ICE detention center while facing widespread criticism for her handling of protests outside it.

The first-term governor campaigned as a fighter against Trump and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She highlighted her experience as a Navy helicopter pilot and said she was trained “that in a crisis, you run toward the fight.” But to South Jersey progressives who worked hard to campaign for her, Sherrill’s decision to respond to tensions between protesters and ICE with a designated protest zone policed by state officers represented a betrayal. The governor called the decision “absolutely necessary to protect public safety and avoid escalation from ICE.” But the state police’s show of force, video of which replayed across national news and social media channels for days, “kind of resembled what ICE was doing in the first place,” said Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, one of Sherrill’s primary opponents, who was arrested outside the facility last year.

“This was not the kind and quality of leadership we were voting for, or hoping to see,” said Michele Messer, 52, a leader of Cooper River Indivisible, one of the groups that campaigned for Sherrill.

A rising star in the Democratic Party, Sherrill overperformed in November in parts of South Jersey that had been viewed as fertile ground for her Republican opponent. She flipped back three counties that went red in 2024.

Sherrill said she was trying to “lower the temperature” to prevent Newark from becoming another Minneapolis when she announced her plans to send state troopers to Delaney Hall. She later disagreed with a comparison between state police and federal immigration officers in Minneapolis during a tense interview on WNYC’s Ask Governor Sherrill, noting that state police didn’t kill anyone.

“I don’t think they have the same concern for human life in many cases that I do, and that our police forces in New Jersey share,” she said.

Activists said she should have known that sending in police and corralling people into a free speech zone can escalate already fraught demonstrations.

“I mean, there’s precedent, there’s history. We’ve all read about how these things go, and yet that was the choice she made,” said Messer, a Haddon Township resident who has protested at Delaney Hall.

Patricia Campos-Medina, a former campaign adviser to Sherrill, said the governor’s handling of Delaney Hall — and how she manages “the fallout of her decisions” — has been an early test of her leadership.

“It’s her first real test [of] how she manages the duties of being the highest public safety officer of the state leading New Jersey, and then still protecting the immigrant community who lives here,” said Campos-Medina, an ally of the governor who works with the labor movement.

Sherrill has built her national profile on fighting the Trump administration, and those who have become the most frustrated with her share that mission. How she navigates this moment could determine whether she can keep that base focused on fighting the president, instead of her.

‘I’m not proud to have voted for her’

Sherrill has called for the closure of Delaney Hall and her administration announced multiple measures to support the fight against the detention center since the late May backlash against her began.

Activists from across the state rallied in Trenton on June 1 and delivered a letter to Sherrill calling on her to “honor our First Amendment rights, cease police brutality and to enable the closure of Delaney Hall.”

“As the grassroots who campaigned for you, we also expect ongoing communication with your administration to navigate this perilous time in New Jersey,” the letter continued, signed by about 40 organizations statewide, including Cooper River Indivisible and several other South Jersey groups.

The next day, New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport, Sherrill’s appointee, filed a lawsuit against GEO Group — the private company that runs Delaney Hall — to give the state health department full access to the facility over reports of “inhumane and unsanitary conditions.”

Two days later, Sherrill and the state legislature announced an infusion of $20 million to assist with immigration defense and launched a rapid legal defense effort amid concerns about due process.

Marie Henselder-Kimmel, 65, a Cherry Hill resident who leads the South Jersey group NJ Voters Want More Say, said the reports of bad conditions in the facility are not new, so she doesn’t understand why the administration did not take legal action months earlier.

“I foresee that we’re going to have to keep pressuring to get them to keep doing those more bold things,” she said.

Henselder-Kimmel said she feels “torn” about Sherrill’s decision to send state police because she agrees ICE would have escalated otherwise. But she said it seemed like Sherrill may have sent the police in without understanding what they were going to do.

Cristian Moreno-Rodriguez, who works as the executive director of El Pueblo Unido of Atlantic City, an organization that supports Latino immigrants, said Sherrill’s handling of the protests has fully broken the trust with his community.

Sherrill’s campaign made a particular effort to target Latino voters. She did particularly well in New Jersey’s largest Hispanic-majority cities, which moved an average of 18 points toward the Democrat after rightward shifts in 2024.

“We’re not going to forgive her for what she’s done,” said Moreno-Rodriguez, who worked for One Giant Leap, a super PAC that supported Sherrill and raised about $9 million by the end of 2025.

Sherrill was not Moreno-Rodriguez’s first choice in the primary, but she was a better choice for his community than Republican Jack Ciattarelli, he said. Still, he said he was expecting better from the Democrat.

“I don’t regret voting for Mikie Sherrill because she was better than Jack Ciattarelli, but I’m not proud to have voted for her,” he said.

Pushing back against ICE has been one of Sherrill’s priorities during her first months as governor. She banned them from staging on state property without a judicial warrant, signed the state’s sanctuary policy into law, and created a portal for people to submit videos of ICE for investigation. She also signed a law banning ICE agents and other law enforcement officers from wearing masks, but it is being fought in the courts.

Her administration is also fighting a proposed detention center in Roxbury in court and said it will fight any other proposed centers.

Activists have been demanding Sherrill meet with detainees, but she says she has not been allowed in except for one “closely controlled and limited tour” on June 8, in which she was not allowed to speak with those being held there.

Several members of Congress, who are authorized to conduct oversight visits, have visited the detention center, including Sen. Andy Kim, a South Jersey Democrat who made headlines for getting pepper-sprayed while trying to de-escalate tensions between federal immigration officers and protesters. Kim faced criticism from some activists for what they viewed as trying to negotiate with ICE, but others have praised him for being on the ground in a way they have not seen from Sherrill.

Sherrill and activists alike have said that the demonstrators have been largely peaceful. But U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a Cape May County Republican, accused the protests of being “more like anarchy” and called on Sherrill to bring state police back.

State Sen. Michael Testa, a Cumberland County Republican, praised Sherrill’s “decision to cooperate with federal authorities” and “restore order” by bringing state police in, and added fuel to the fire by thanking her for “supporting President Trump and the brave men and women of ICE.”

‘The buck stops with her’

Activists have expressed frustration that the narrative has strayed from the conditions inside Delaney Hall to the fight outside it — a point Sherrill has echoed.

But after state police clashed with protesters, Sherrill focused her criticism on what she described as “aggressive and dangerous” disruptors and defended the officers.

Her remarks further infuriated activists who accused her of echoing the state police’s narrative, which they say does not align with what they experienced on the ground or saw online.

When a radio caller confronted Sherrill on WNYC over state police brutalizing nonviolent protesters, the governor said “if there were incidents like that, the attorney general will be looking into that.”

Vikki Toomer, a Cooper River Indivisible leader who has protested outside Delaney Hall, said that listening to Sherrill’s news conferences have given her “that same visceral reaction” she gets from listening to Trump.

“I don’t know if they were feeding her lies, or that’s the narrative she was trying to spin … all I know is what she was saying was not true, and she was not taking the time to listen,” Toomer said.

Toomer said she believes the governor knows her plan did not go well but also “has not come out publicly and said, ‘Oops, I made a mistake.’”

When asked on the radio whether she believes her administration has suffered a loss of trust, Sherrill said sending state police “was really not done focusing on politics, and I certainly hope not.”

“This was focused on making a really hard decision in a situation that nobody wanted,” she said.

Linda Greenwood, 74, a Voorhees resident who belongs to Cooper River Indivisible and campaigned for Sherrill, believes the governor has good intentions but does not think she has been unfairly blamed.

“She’s the governor,” Greenwood said. “The buck stops with her. She brought the state police in. She has to take responsibility for what happened there, and I think she will.”

Lawrence Garrity, 29, was the lead volunteer for long shifts at Sherrill’s Cumberland County campaign office between overnight shifts at Wawa last year. The Rowan student said he feels “salty” he worked so hard to elect her and it feels like she is not on their side.

“It doesn’t feel like she’s not on our side either. It’s like she’s sitting in the middle … people are genuinely in danger, and you’re trying to, like, half-ass fight it,” he said.

Garrity said he had to go to urgent care after state police unleashed tear gas and pepper balls on protesters.

“Somebody said they’re gonna make T-shirts that said ‘I voted for Mikie Sherrill and all I got was tear-gassed,’” he said.