The U.S. Department of Justice announced on Monday that Representative LaMonica McIver (D–N.J.) has been formally charged in connection with a recent confrontation involving law enforcement outside a Newark Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility.
“Today my office has charged Congresswoman McIver with violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 111(a)(1) for assaulting, impeding and interfering with law enforcement,” stated acting U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Alina Habba in a post on X.
At the same time, Habba revealed that her office would be dropping a separate charge of trespassing against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who had been accused of committing a class C misdemeanor during the same incident, reports National Review.
“After extensive consideration, we have agreed to dismiss Mayor Baraka’s misdemeanor charge of trespass for the sake of moving forward,” Habba said in a statement.
Despite the dropped charge, Habba emphasized that this would not mark the conclusion of the legal proceedings related to the incident. The events in question took place last week when Baraka, McIver, and fellow Representatives Robert Menendez Jr. and Bonnie Watson Coleman—both Democrats from New Jersey—were at the ICE facility along with a group of demonstrators.
According to officials from the Department of Homeland Security, the gates were opened to allow an ICE transport bus to enter, and the lawmakers then proceeded through the gate, bypassing security. The legislators stated that their presence at the facility was part of their official duty to conduct federal oversight.
McIver has dismissed the charges against her as politically driven. “Earlier this month, I joined my colleagues to inspect the treatment of ICE detainees at Delaney Hall in my district. We were fulfilling our lawful oversight responsibilities, as members of Congress have done many times before, and our visit should have been peaceful and short. Instead, ICE agents created an unnecessary and unsafe confrontation when they chose to arrest Mayor Baraka,” she said.
She added that she looks forward “to the truth being laid out clearly in court.” Representative Menendez has previously alleged that ICE officers physically confronted both McIver and Watson Coleman. Speaking to the media at the time, McIver said, “We were assaulted by multiple ICE agents.”
McIver’s attorney, Paul Fishman, condemned the Justice Department’s action, describing it as “spectacularly inappropriate.”
“She went to Delaney Hall to do her job. As a member of Congress, she has the right and responsibility to see how ICE is treating detainees. Rather than facilitating that inspection, ICE agents chose to escalate what should have been a peaceful situation into chaos. This prosecution is an attempt to shift the blame for ICE’s behavior to Congresswoman McIver,” Fishman stated.
Officials from the Trump administration have pushed back, asserting that McIver’s conduct constituted an assault on law enforcement and that she is not being treated any differently than any private citizen would be.
“If it was a typical U.S. citizen, and they tried to storm into a detention facility that’s housing dangerous criminals or any person at all, they would be arrested,” said DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin during a Saturday appearance on Fox News. “Just because you are a member
