Holly Schepisi is a Republican member of the New Jersey State Senate from Montvale, an attorney, and previously, the President of the Holy Name Medical Center Foundation. She’s also a loud defender of ICE, and a loud critic of migrant defense efforts. About a week ago, she posted the following on Facebook. I challenged her to produce evidence for her claims, which she blithely ignored. So let me try again.

Here are some issues with her claims:

1. Paragraph 1 and the first sentence of paragraph 2 imply that protesters engaged in orchestrated, initiatory attacks on law enforcement. No evidence is provided for this claim.
2. Paragraph 2, sentence 2 implies that law enforcement were overwhelmed by an organized, initiatory attack. No evidence is provided for this claim.
3. Paragraph 2, sentence 3 says that “only 2 protesters” were arrested. We now know that since Memorial Day, more than 90 have been arrested, with the Public Defender requesting that charges for 40 of these be dropped for failure to satisfy even the minimal conditions for probable cause. The preceding link goes to an article in The New York Times that quotes a lawyer from the Public Defenders Office: “’The police have not made out the barest minimum of probable cause,’ which requires listing both the specific behavior that constitutes an offense and evidence that the person charged was the one who committed it, Mr. Van Meter said.” Is she willing to defend the proposition that these 40 individuals be charged nonetheless? What does she make of the quality of the police work here?
4. Paragraph 2, sentence 4 claims that a “curfew” was established from 9 pm to 6 am starting just after midnight on Monday, June 1. In fact, the “curfew” was in operation well past those hours, including when I was present at the scene, at Doremus and Wilson, between roughly 6 pm and 8:30 pm that day. So her claim about the de facto operation of the curfew is inaccurate.
5. Paragraph 3, sentence 1 says that “bystanders and protesters” will not be allowed “inside.” The claim is unclear. Does she mean “inside” Delaney Hall, or does she mean “inside” the area enclosed by the curfew? If she means the former, neither bystanders nor protesters have ever been allowed inside Delaney Hall. If she means the latter, the area was held well past the announced time of the curfew. In the first case, her claim is superfluous and meaningless; in the second, it’s inaccurate.
6. Paragraph 3, sentence 2 implies that the protesters were responsible for the debris they “discarded.” In fact, the protesters had a systematic system of garbage disposal until law enforcement intervened, dispersed them, and destroyed the welcome/hospitality system that had been set up across a year’s time, from 2025 to the present (see this as well). The hospitality tent and garbage collection system were there when I first visited Delaney Hall in July 2025. The hospitality tent volunteers were a slightly different cohort than the protesters, mostly older, non-confrontational faith-based activists from the surrounding area (e.g., Pax Christi). Schepisi half-acknowledges the destruction of their work when she says that the authorities will “re-establish support tents.” She neglects to mention that they will have to re-establish what was painstakingly built before they showed up, and what they themselves destroyed. As far as I know, no one has offered to compensate the people who built the initial hospitality system, and there’s been little discussion as to whether warrantless entry into the tents by law enforcement was legally permissible. But in my view, both of those things should be demanded, and both should happen.

Schepisi’s claims are reckless falsehoods masquerading as responsible discourse. If she wants to be taken seriously, she should provide evidence for the contested claims she’s making. If not, I think we’re justified in concluding that her falsehoods are deliberate, and should be described as such.