


Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) had a stern message for Republican officials threatening to arrest lawmakers who were involved in a confrontation at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Newark, New Jersey.
The congresswoman accused President Donald Trump’s administration of illegally preventing a group of Garden State Democrats from touring the facility, where Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested for trespassing on Friday.
Afterwards, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said the government was looking into arresting three congress members who joined Baraka during the visit.
“They’re using public intimidation because they know that they cannot come for us all,” Ocasio-Cortez said during a livestream on social media Saturday night.
She argued that the protesting politicians were exercising “their legal and constitutional obligation to conduct oversight,” and it was Trump officials who were actually in the wrong.
“If anyone is breaking the law in this situation, it’s not members of Congress, it’s the Department of Homeland Security,” she said. “It’s people like Tom Homan and Secretary Kristi Noem.”
Ocasio-Cortez then warned, “You lay a finger on Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman or any of the Representatives that were there… we’re going to have a problem.”
The congresswoman said the lawmakers were “legally required to be granted access and they legally cannot be inhibited from accessing these facilities to conduct their constitutional obligation to investigate and conduct oversight.”
“So if Kristi Noem wants to break the law, that’s on her,” she continued. “But it sure as hell is not someone like Rep. Robert Menendez that needs to be arrested.”
On Saturday, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin accused the group of attacking ICE officers and said the Trump administration was looking into arresting New Jersey Reps. Coleman, Menendez and LaMonica McIver.
“I think that we should let viewers know there will likely be more coming,” she told CNN of potential arrests. “We actually have body camera footage of some of these members of Congress assaulting our ICE enforcement officers, including body-slamming a female ICE officer.”
“This is an ongoing investigation, and that is definitely on the table,” she added.