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Rabbit: Protestors at Delaney Hall concentration camp in Newark are in danger of being assaulted and killed by I.C.E. agents. Rabbit: The sensible, centrist thing to do here is send in the New Jersey State Police. Rabbit: Ah yes, the famously gentle, law-abiding officers of the Garden State. Turns out they're displaying Trump flags and assaulting protestors themselves. Rabbit: Then there's just one thing left for Governor Sherrill to do. Rabbit: Lie her ass off about it? Rabbit: Lie her ass off about it!

NEW COMIC TWO OR THREE TIMES A WEEK, OR WHEN THE MOOD STRIKES

This is a lot to get into in a small space but, to get everyone up to speed: ICE has a detention facility in Newark, New Jersey, not far from one of the largest airports in the world, where they're "detaining" around 1200 men, women, and children. Reports from inside tell of hellish conditions: worms in the food, no medical aid beyond Tylenol, dirty water, abuse, and so on. About what you'd expect from America, even though -- I feel compelled to point out -- ICE detainment is supposed to be non-punitive. Recall that being in the country illegally is a civil offense, not a criminal one. We seem to forget that a lot. To protest the conditions some of the detainees began a hunger strike and more protestors began to show up outside of the facility, leading to clashes, including one where my own senator, Sen. Andy Kim, was hit with a pepper ball. That's only made people angrier, so more protestors showed up, and Governor Mikie Sherrill, who was elected on a fierce anti-Trump pro-immigrant platform, was refused entry.

After all that you might expect that Sherrill would, I don't know, do something substantive, but instead she decided to send in the New Jersey State Police, who, of course, put up pro-Trump flags and then made things worse. On video. Despite there being video of police in riot gear knocking over their own barricades to go beat up protestors, Sherrill got up with her bare face hanging out and claimed that neither of those things had happened. Both she and my other senator, Cory Booker, have blamed the violence at Delaney on outside agitators, as if people from places besides Newark aren't allowed to protest against concentration camps, and as if protestors started a riot by throwing their heads against police batons and tear-gassing themselves.

Sherrill and Booker have received a lot of heat from this and seem to be improving their positions but actions have been tepid at best. I guess we'll see. New Jersey remains strongly blue despite whatever you're reading in comment sections on Facebook, where there are always plenty of assholes to come in spouting about the Supremacy Clause and how immigrants deserve the death penalty or whatever.

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